Man vs Web Design

Bear Grylls is famous for surviving murderous landscapes. A classic episode of his television program featured Bear on a walk about across the Australian outback, eating bugs, sheltering from lightning and drinking his own urine to hydrate in the blistering heat. Working with WordPress web design, I can really relate. No really!

On TV, it looks like Bear’s survival depends solely on him. But viewers safe at home know there’s a camera crew and back-up support nearby. The success of each episode depends on their combined efforts.

Just like Man vs. Wild, web design projects are actually a team effort, even if one party takes the creative lead. Bear Grylls doesn’t film himself fishing for piranha with a bow and arrow and Roundpeg’s websites don’t get done without the client’s support. Together, we take the project from mock-up to launch day and our seminars help you prepare for future adventures. Here’s a breakdown of the journey.

Preparation

Hate meetings? I just love meetings. When you come on board for a Roundpeg web design project, we send you a kick-off document to fill out. This is just a quick form full of the basic questions we absolutely must answer before doing anything. When you get the kick-off document, do your best to answer the prompts. If you don’t know something off the top of your head, please give it a little thought or do a quick search of your records for the answer. But don’t drive yourself crazy, we can answer a lot of the questions together too.

Bring this document with you to the kick-off meeting. We’ll use it like an agenda to guide the conversation. Questions like “What websites have you seen that you like?” and “What do you want visitors to think about your business?” help us know how to take the next steps.

Starting the Trail

After the kick-off meeting, we’ll check in by phone once every week. In week two, you’ll talk to Allison about website copy. She’ll give you writing tips if you’re producing the copy on your own or conduct a short interview if we’re taking care of it for you. Meanwhile, myself and the team will produce visual mock-ups of the your web design and send those to you. During our week three check-in call, you’ll pick one mock-up and we’ll start building with that theme. Here’s where things get sticky.

Survive and Thrive

In order to keep moving forward, you’ve gotta help us out. Many of our clients choose to manage their cost by taking on responsibility for the written copy themselves. This means the most important part of the project is out of our hands. It’s up to you to write and submit pages of copy we can use.

Without organized and approved content, your website project can’t continue. Like water in the desert, your copy keeps us going. We set week seven of the project as the drop-dead date for copy. If there’s no copy to go on, we’ll start spacing out the check-in calls to let you continue working on it at your own pace.

Breaking down the project like this is rough, I hate doing it. Everything’s still gonna be ok, no one’s gonna let Bear Grylls die, but the whole adventure slows down. Avoid delays and keep your project on track with these two survival tips:

  1. Do your work. If you plan a 25 page website, it’s up to you to write 25 website pages.
  2. Don’t plan a 25 page website on your own. If you don’t have existing written copy that can be adapted, writing a deep website on your own is stupid. There’s a good chance you’ll get bogged down in the middle. We can pull you out and steer you right, but you have to let us help and accept the extra cost for that.

If copy comes together on schedule, we can get the whole thing done in eight awesome weeks.

Reach Safety

After you’ve been trained up on WordPress, submitted the final draft of your copy and signed off on the web design, it’s time to launch. We’ll take care of the technical stuff to finish up and send you an email with new website login details. That’s it; done. At least until the next adventure.

Thinking about a website update? Give us a call. We’ll survive the web design process together, maybe even enjoy the web design process, and no one will have to eat any spiders for protein. I call that success.

photo credit: pfly via photopin cc