Want to know how to give great website feedback to a designer?
Does this sound familiar? You’ve hired someone to help with your marketing or branding, they send you the first draft and it’s not quite what you want.
The thing is, designers and marketers can’t read your mind! That’s why you receive first drafts and first-look homepages. If we’re designing a logo, you’ll get concepts to review before we start polishing anything to make it *just so*. If we’re building a website, we’ll send you a first draft of the homepage. This is the most important part of getting the design right.
This is your opportunity to get everything you want out of the design and layout. We want to hear your honest opinions before we commit that style to the rest of your site or brand. Changing things later is no fun for anyone, so, to creative marketers, your input is so important! We may not get everything right on the first try, and that’s okay, we just need to know!
Your brand, website or campaign is only going to feel like magic if your hard-earned skills and expertise work together with that of your graphic, marketing or web designer. The success of a creative project like this is dependent on clear communication. You know your product or service inside out, and you probably have a good idea of how you want that to be portrayed. We, as creatives are the experts in designing beautiful, functional and high converting websites. In an ideal world, we would both speak the same language, but design is subjective and often it’s difficult to articulate what we mean.
So, how can you make sure that you are providing the most effective feedback that you can so that marketers and creatives can really earn the money you’re paying them?
Here are my five things to think about when giving website feedback to a designer.
Let’s create a website design, branding or marketing you’ll fall in love with.
1. Give honest feedback
If you don’t like it; you’re not sure about the layout, the colours, the fonts, the tone or any other aspect of the design, we need to know. What’s more, we need to know NOW, not in 3 weeks or just before we plan to launch. The more honest you can be with your feedback, the more likely you are to get exactly what you want. Remember to also include information about the things you like so we can move forward with a focus on those as well. Come launch day you’ll be brimming with pride and ready to shout to the world about your new shiny brand or website.
2. Give specific feedback
When you’re giving feedback, point out exactly what is not working for you, and why it is not working. Saying that it just looks off or that one of the images doesn’t look right on your screen is not going to help us progress the project. Be sure to include specific details about which element needs adjusting and include screenshots where you can. We’re happy to give something a try, so if you’ve got suggestions, we can try them out…unless there’s a very good reason not to. Any good designer will tell you if your suggestion doesn’t work and give you the reason why, so don’t be shy.
3. Ask why
If you are not sure what on Earth I was thinking, I would love to explain why I’ve done something in a particular way. Every time I build a web page, create a graphic, or add some text, I have done it for a specific purpose. If you want to know why I’ve made your website like this or that, let’s talk about it.
4. Remember your goals
When you are giving feedback, relate every piece of criticism back to your goals. If you want something changed, think about how this has an impact on what you’re trying to achieve. Does this change move you closer or further away from your goals?
5. Remember your audience
The first thing in your mind whenever you make any decision or provide any feedback should be your audience. What does your audience need? What will your audience love? How will the change affect how your audience receives your brand and engages with it? Think about your audience and let us know all about them so that the end product is the perfect fit.
My biggest goal as a website designer is to create something that you love and your audience loves. If you can provide the right feedback, at the right time, we can make this happen together.
