Remedy was recently invited to present at the Not For Profit Technology Show in London, alongside James Higgott from The Royal Marsden Hospital. We wanted to impart some insider knowledge to not for profit organisations on how to make the most of their relationships with external designers, specifically, when working on web projects.
Our presentation was split into three sections – preparing a brief, choosing an agency and getting the design right.
Here is an overview of the first section (with two more blog posts to follow):
Great work comes from a great brief
It’s very rare that great creative work comes out of a hastily put-together brief. Like the foundations of a building, get this bit right and the design and build won’t be in vain. So where do you start? What will a design agency need to be able to deliver a great website?
1) Background information
Assume the design agency knows nothing about your brand, or even your sector for that matter. Arm them with everything they need to get to grips with what you do and what you are all about: annual reports, brochures, flyers, web addresses, press clippings and any industry insights that may be of use.
2) Clear objectives
What is it you hope to achieve with your website? This could be a fairly lengthy list, but you should prioritise. Perhaps you want visitors to sign-up to a newsletter, download resources, make online purchases, recommend your organisation to colleagues, follow you on Twitter or request a quote.
3) Target audiences
Who are they? What makes them tick? Why might they want to do business with you?
Do you have any useful stats? If the majority of potential customers are 18-24 with a love of social media, or if they are chief execs who do a lot of their business at the 19th hole, the designer will need to know. The more an agency knows about your audiences, the more likely they are to come up with a design that resonates with them.
4) What you want users to think, feel and do?
When someone comes to your lovely new website, what should their first reaction be? What do you want them to think about your brand and more importantly, on an emotional level, how do you want your brand to make them feel? And tying in with point number 2, once they have made an emotional connection, what do you want them to do?
5) Tone of voice and brand guidelines
How do you want your brand to come across? Corporate brand leader, no-nonsense professional adviser, an old friend you can rely on…? Every brand has a tone of voice (or at least they should have) and this needs delivering consistently whether online or offline.
Many organisations have a set of brand guidelines. Unfortunately many of them are kept in bottom drawers and not referred to. Don’t let this be the case with you and your brand. If there are rules when it comes to using your logo, your design agency will need to know. Similarly, do you have corporate colours, typefaces, a library of up-to-date imagery? If so, your new website should follow your guidelines (unless of course, it’s time for a brand refresh).
6) Competitors
In the Not-for-Profit world, these are known as ‘other players’. Whatever you call them, unless your brand’s offering is totally unique, there will be other organisations out there that are vying for the attention of the same customers/members/donors. So who are they, which ones do you admire and why? What can we learn from them? What mistakes are they making that your design agency should avoid?
7) Other brands
There may be organisations that do things in a certain way that, although nothing to do with your sector, you admire. Looking at their websites in particular, they may have a visual style that you like, a certain way with language or a particular way of organising content. It may be more of a ‘brand values thing’. Which brands have an attitude or personality that you might aspire to be like – John Lewis, Volkswagen, Apple, Shake ‘n’ Vac…
8) Content and functionality
Content is, 99 times out of 100, the one thing that will delay the launch of a new website. Whether you are supplying draft copy; fully edited, perfectly formed, search engine optimised copy or a list of bullet points, your site is going nowhere without content. The real need for this may come further down the line in the design process, but nevertheless, it’s best not to leave this right until the 11th hour.
Functionality however, will need to be addressed right up front. A design agency will need to know what your new website has to do. Will it be collecting data? Will it integrate with existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software? Will there be E-commerce functionality, members’ log-in areas, blogs, social media integration…? Without this information, the agency won’t be able to give you an accurate quote or get close to a design solution that makes sense.
9) Measuring success
Looking ahead; the new website has launched, the marketing department are proud to show it off to the world and the competition are green with envy. The question you need to ask yourself way before any of this has happened, is what will you consider to be a successful interaction? For many clients it will be orders or enquiries, but equally it could be Google rankings, the number of users who sign up to support a campaign or a Gold D&AD award. If you know what success will look like to you from the outset, this will definitely help to steer the design process.
10) Hosting
Who will be hosting your website and what kind of server will you need? This will be dictated largely by the amount of traffic you expect and how ‘mission critical’ your website will be.
11) Deadline
Websites take time. Well-planned, beautifully designed, carefully executed websites take longer. If you need to hit a certain date in your calendar, this should be in your brief, but schedules have to be realistic.
12) Budget
The $64,000 (wouldn’t that be nice) question. It would save a lot of time and effort for client and agency alike, if along with all the other nuts and bolts, a realistic budget was part of the brief. Whether you decide to share your budget or not, having a figure agreed internally is essential. At this juncture, it’s worth remembering that as with all things commercial, with website design you get what you pay for and invariably, a £500 website will look unsurprisingly like a £500 website.
If you don’t have the resources or expertise in-house to do some or all of the above, any design agency worth its salt will be able to help guide you through the process, but the more of the groundwork you can do, the better. Even if you are able to write a great brief yourself, the objectivity that a decent agency brings to the table means that you should be prepared for them to challenge, distil and even re-write parts of it.
Should you have a brief you want to discuss, or if you need help putting one together, we’d love to hear from you.
You can download the talk in PDF format including slides from James Higgott at www.ioftech.org.uk/resources
