Behind the Scenes of my Design Process

My design process is pretty straightforward but it is thorough. It means the client is always taken on the journey with me and there are no surprises for either of us.

I don't have ANY rounds of amends after I build a website, you heard right, NONE.

That's not to say there aren't tweaks to be made but all of the real design is done up front; it's something I do with the client so there's very little chance they won't like how it eventually lands on the live pages.

My steps are:

1. Understand the client: their own likes and dislikes, what their website is for, who the users of their site are likely to be and what they might like or dislike.

2. Generate ideas: in discussion we come up with a few websites they like, some images and other elements like colours and fonts; to create a mood-board.

3. Create structure: I always create a site architecture to show what pages are needed and where they will sit in the hierarchy. And I create wireframes to show how I see the different elements sitting on the homepage.

4. Work together: it's at this point that I invite the client to work with me to refine the ideas down so that I can create the mock-ups; this is where the mood-board and wireframe collide so their chosen scheme comes to life.

5. Drive the outcome: I'm a very results-oriented person and often I find that my structured approach to work gets clients over the line a lot more quickly than they expect. I always tailor this to their capacity (their website may not be the only thing on their plate after all!) but I take charge of the timescale to get things done and I give them 'homework' lists so they are very much part of the process.

6. Provide support: after the build and go-live, I stick around. In fact I provide free lifetime support to all my Squarespace clients. Sounds crazy doesn't it? I can do it because Squarespace sites never go wrong on their own and they never need updates or maintenance. If a client (following my training and video tutorials) needs a bit of help, I'd far rather they came to me to ask for it as I care about keeping their website looking great and working well.

For a look behind the scenes of a couple of sites I am currently working on, watch my 4min loom below.