5 Ways To Speed Up Your Website Design
“Are we there yet?” is most commonly heard from the backseat of a minivan on a road trip, but if you’ve found yourself saying the same thing in the midst of a website design, you’re not alone.
The adventure you’ve chosen to take on (or were chosen for) is a wild ride and it’s easy to forget how much power you really have to reach your deadline, faster.
1. Ask for directions before you offer feedback.
Numerous rounds of review and approvals can quickly eat up hours, days and even weeks. That said, the more guidance your agency partner offers you with their feedback request, the better. Simply getting “Which design do you feel your target audience will respond to more?” vs “Please give us your feedback” can dramatically cut time spent ruminating over the right response. If speed is your goal, focusing on what will move you to the next step fastest is key.
2. Limit poling for opinions.
Cut out unnecessary review time eaten up by waiting on multiple people’s opinions or approval. If you have the ultimate power of approval – use it to step on the gas. That power wouldn’t have been given to you if weren’t capable of making the tough decisions. Besides, don’t you know what happens when you ask everyone in the car where they want to eat?
It’s understandable that some project milestones may need a multi-layered approval process. When this is the case, be certain to set a deadline for feedback and be clear about the impact to timeline if it isn’t met.
3. Take a few shortcuts if you can.
It’s highly likely there are at least a couple steps in your website design process that can be removed without compromise the integrity of the project. For instance, cutting straight to design by removing the wireframing step in certain cases where you have many similar templates. It’s often agency courtesy to offer you a review at every step, but not always a necessity.
When you’ve completed your first website design and want to head out early next time, consider the following tips to save time from the start.
4. Tell us all about where you want to go and who we need to meet.
Nothing speeds up a website design faster than giving your agency partner a comprehensive download of how your business ticks at the kickoff. Full comprehension of your target audience and goals at the get go eliminates a lot of back and forth piecemeal information that can easily get lost in the shuffle. Even just a couple more hours dedicated on the front end will result in more instances of you remarking “spot on!” and “approved!” when review time comes around.
5. Map out a plan and pack early.
Making decisions early on about how you will source and/or reuse content is key. If you are expecting everyone in your organization to chip in and help with your project, be sure your “helpers” are given as much lead time as possible to get started. Defining clear objectives for what you need and accompanying deadlines will ensure you still have enough time to edit, proof or redo what you’ve received.
Embarking on a website design? Check out how we work here.
Curious about the whole web design process? Check out our previous blog post “The 6 Stages of Web Design.“
