I have been continuing to work on my Cavern Retail Consulting website. It has been about 3 weeks since my last post. In that post I outlined my first steps:
1) Contacting a designer.
2) Filling out a questionnaire about my company, and my expectations for my new site:
( Your Organization and your New Website)
3) Receiving and reviewing the quote from the designer,and providing the deposit.
Over the last 3 weeks I have spoken to my designer every 2 or 3 days. This has kept both of us on track and engaged in the project.
To start, I was e-mailed 3 different ‘looks’ for my website. It was explained that what I liked or didn’t like about each of them would move the designer forward in my preferred direction. It appeared that I liked round shapes, not square ones. I liked photos with a soft, rather than a hard feel. I preferred cool colours to neutrals.
With the above information, a basic look and layout for my home page and my interior pages was designed. I was also asked to decide how many pages I thought I needed, and menu buttons were named to reflect the future pages.
I would estimate that the above, took me 3 days at the most. The next step was, and continues to be, the most challenging and rewarding thing about designing my website. The CONTENT.
I had to provide the content for each page. In my case, because I am my product…the ‘About Me’ and the ‘Services’ pages have been where I had to do the most thinking and writing,and re-writing. I had a bit of an advantage. I had been working as a consultant before I started designing this site. This gave me experiences,and aspirations to draw from. My other advantage was that I had always liked writing, and had taken an online writing course last year. I have also written almost 200 blog posts. After I e-mailed my copy to the designer, a day or so passed, and I was e-mailed back a ‘mock up’ of each page. The thing I liked was that the designer had re-organized my words, and added photos, quotes in the side bar etc. It was at this phase that I really began to appreciate the skills of an experienced designer. I can see my website becoming something that reflects me and my business. These little adjustments are what add character and personality to a page full of WORDS. I finally began to understand what this process has been all about.
My designer gave me some great advice. He said that I didn’t have to think of this site as ‘WRITTEN IN STONE’. I really appreciated that. I tend to be the kind of person who likes to work until something is ‘RIGHT’, whatever that means. I realized yesterday that my site does look good, my words make sense, and are written in my voice. I will see the site on Sunday, in it’s almost final form…
To be Continued…
