After more than three years of working at Nextfly, I’ve come to realize that inspiration is often hard to find when writing a blog. I often spend hours researching the perfect blog topic and ask coworkers for ideas. Often, I am stuck wondering “how do I write my blog about something that people will actually read?”
It finally hit me at 6:00am when I was attempting to start my next blog. “What do a lot of business professionals like?” … “coffee”. Then it hit me: websites are a lot like a great coffee. How so? Keep reading.
At Nextfly, we have a very streamline approach to website design. It all starts with the initial inquiry in which a prospective client gets in touch with us by either filling out a contact form on our website or reaches out via a phone call to the office.
With that inquiry, we ask many questions to see what the client is interested in. That can consist of the following:
- Are you looking for a website redesign?
- Would you like your website to be mobile friendly so it fits perfectly on an iPad, iPhone, or whatever device your client might happen to be using?
- Are you interested in gaining control of your website and having the ability to update yourselves?
- What is your overall budget for a redesign?
After some back and forth happens with boring contracts and paperwork, the magic begins!
We discuss ideas for a website design and ask the client a few questions, including some of the following:
- What are some of your favorite websites?
- What overall message are you trying to convey to potential clients and customers?
- What type of colors would you like throughout the website?
With the design ideas gathered, we develop a mockup design, get approval and then send it to development.
After it comes out of development the website is brought to life, however, it is quite black and lacks flavor. How so?
When the website comes out of development it is full of potential, much like a good cup of coffee. It has a good foundation and the ability to be great, but it’s missing a few ingredients.
Now is where the client steps in. They provide all of the ingredients to bring the website to life!
Photos -What’s an ingredient that helps bring a coffee to life? Sugar. To me, I believe that photos are like a coffee’s sugar. Great photo imagery brings a bare-boned website to life and makes it look sweeeet. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this photo below.
These are two pictures taken of me at the Indianapolis Mini Marathon on two different cameras. The one on the left was not shot in high resolution, making the photo much smaller and, when enlarged, it becomes blurry and pixelated. The one on the right, however, was shot in HD. It was exported at a much higher quality, giving me the ability to shrink the photos, zoom in, and stretch it in the way that I best saw fit.
Unfortunately, many photos that we obtain from clients are similar to the one on the right. They were taken years ago on an older camera or cell phone, and aren’t the quality that are desired when making the the main focus on a website. Due to this, the website’s overall quality starts to fade and that’s not something that is desired on a brand new web design.
How can you avoid this? To start, you can take photos using a high quality camera. This camera can range from being a $3000 dollar camera with $10,000 worth of lenses, or just a nice camera phone with high resolution settings.
If you have the budget, however, I would insist on hiring a photographer to take photos. They can capture your facility, your staff, your products, and your company’s day-to-day operations by photographing your employees while they are working.
If neither of these options work, set up a stock photo account and download stock imagery. There are plenty stock photo websites on the internet these days from istockphoto to shutterstock and more! They all might have a photo or two that would work perfectly on your website instead of a low quality, blurry one.
Disclaimer: Finding the perfect stock photo does take some time. They are photo libraries on each stock photo website full of THOUSANDS of photos. It might take a while to sort through the photos to find just one or two that will work on your website. However, when you find the right one, it will totally be worth it!
Verbiage/Content Writing/Text – There are many different names for it, but what I’m talking about here is the WORDS on your website. From banner text, to testimonials, to content on a web page, there are many holes to fill in on a website when it comes out of development.
The text on your site is the cream. It helps blend everything together. Coffee and sugar can’t often stand alone much like a website and its photos. It’s close to impossible to be able to get across all of the information you’d like to your customer and potential client without being able to tell them about your company and its goods and services.
Writing about your company’s goods and services can be difficult to a business owner, however. As a business owner, there are many things going on day to day and it can be a struggle to develop the content needed for a web page. But let me tell you this: it needs to be done and there’s no better person to talk about all the amazing things you offer your clients and customers than yourself.
That being said, a new website design can completely change your business. It can give you a fresh look, give you a better presence on search engines, and even help bring in more leads. But this is something that can only be done when the website design company and the client work hand and hand to accomplish this goal.
With cooperation, your website, much like your coffee will consist of the perfect combination of all the right ingredients.