A Behind the Scenes Look at the Gold Standard Design Client Experience
Have you been shopping around for a website designer? Curious as to what it’s like to work with one? Or maybe you’re on the fence trying to decide whether to DIY your site yourself or hire someone else!
Whatever your situation, I want to peel back the curtain and give you a behind-the-scenes look at my process and give you a taste of what you’ll get working with me.
No need to be shy!
Come along friend, and let me show you the magic of the Gold Standard Design experience!
#1. Free Consult Call
The first step in working with any designer should be a consultation call. In our case, we offer this as a free 30 minute call you can book on the website.First, you’ll fill out a short inquiry form that will give me some preliminary information about you and your current situation (do you have a current website? What’s your business’ main focus? etc.)Then you’ll get to pick an open time slot for the call on my calendar that works with your schedule. If none of the available times work for you - just shoot me a note and I’ll get flexible and fit ya in!Once I receive your booking and info, I’ll review it and take a peek at your current site - if you have one. I’ll make some notes and then we’ll be all set for the call! Once we hop on the video call, you and I will chat about all your website hopes and dreams. I’ll ask you some additional questions to get a fuller picture of your situation, a sense of your vibe, and what you hope to achieve with the site (host a blog, create a shop to sell products, give people a landing place to check out your portfolio, etc).I’ll also dig a bit into what your particular pain points are (what’s been most difficult/troublesome for you), and - SPOILER ALERT - I’ll probably make some really corny jokes too! I like to have fun, and I want my clients to feel comfortable with me as well. If you’re not down for a joke or 3, we might not be the best fit!You’ll also have a chance to ask me any questions your little heart desires! No question is too big or small - I welcome them all! (Wow - I didn’t mean to rhyme there, but I’ll take it lol! As my mother used to say “I’m a poet and didn’t know it!” I told you there would be corny jokes!)
The goal for this call is for us to get comfortable with each other, so I would absolutely love for you to tell me any fears or hesitations you have about working with a designer. I know it can be hard to trust someone else with your vision, your baby, your business - but I love working with people to create something we can both be proud of AND that will grow your business.#2. Booking
After the call I’ll take all my notes and build out an invoice detailing everything we talked about. Then I’ll email you the full invoice and contract. That will give you a chance to look everything over and decide if you’d like to work with me. If you do - wahoo! All you need to do is sign the contract (digitally, of course!) and pay the deposit.At Gold Standard Design we work on a 3 payment system for all our projects. That means in order to secure your spot as a client, you would pay an initial 33% deposit of your total invoice. Mid-way through the project your second 33% payment is due, and the final 34% payment is scheduled for the last day of our project - launch day! Don’t worry - we’ll talk more in depth about the schedule later on.All right, so you’ve signed your contract and paid the 33% deposit. Now what? Well, my friend, now you get to choose your design date! After payment is confirmed I send you a link to my design calendar and you choose which start date works best for your schedule. Keep in mind when choosing your design date that you will have homework to complete before the first day of our project, so don’t go picking a date that’s 2 days away unless you’re SUPER sure you can hammer out all the content by then. I generally advise clients to give themselves at least 2 weeks to complete all the homework.Think 2 weeks is waaaaayyy too much time?
Keep in mind that if your content is NOT submitted by the due date (which is BEFORE the first day of the project) you will have to pick another design date and pay another 33% deposit.No one wants that!
Once you’ve selected your design date we can move onto the next step which is…CLIENT HOMEWORK!
Ok, I know that wasn’t as fun as you were expecting. But hear me out! Completing this part of the process is, admittedly, the least glamorous (unless you’re really into writing). But it’s arguably the most important! Why? Because a beautiful website with the best photos and graphics will be completely useless if you don’t have any words on it!
Writing your website’s copy (a fancy term for all the words on the various pages of your website) is absolutely CRUCIAL to getting your audience to do the thing you want. That thing might be buying a product, scheduling a call, or signing up for a blog. Whatever your goal for your site, you need words to accomplish it.Not great at writing? Not to worry! I have a handy dandy guide to help you figure out what to put on each page. It’s important that your personality shines through your words, and my copywriting guide will help you through this process as easily and painlessly as possible.Along with the copywriting guide is a bit of mindset work to complete as well. What is mindset work? In this case I’m referring to a worksheet that will get you to think through the intended purpose for your website and help figure out your ideal client, since we’ll be building your website for them and not for you. Surprised? Think about it this way: you want to attract people to your site, regardless of your goal, so it needs to be built in a way that is appealing to whoever is going to buy your stuff, listen to your music, or read your blog.
One last thing you’ll need to submit is a Pinterest inspiration board. After working through your ideal client worksheet you’ll create a Pinterest board and pin various things your ideal client would like. Font styles, colors, general decor, anything you think your ideal client would love you’re going to pin to that board.Look, I get that it might seem silly to make a mood board for what seems like an imaginary person. But this will actually help me design your whole site, as I can pull inspiration from the vibes I get from your board. AND it will help you to figure out who you’re going to be marketing to so you can really dial in your message.So, now you can see why I said it was important to give yourself enough time to complete this homework before we start the project!
The amount of time you’ll need will vary from person to person, but try not to pick a time when you know you’ll be busy with 10 other things in your life.
#3. 2 Week Project
Now that you’ve completed your copywriting and mindset homework we’re ready to begin building your site!
We’ll begin your project on a Monday, where I’ll go through all your submitted materials (completed Pinterest board, copywriting, ideal client worksheet) and build the site’s homepage. I’ll let you review it to approve/edit the basics (colors, fonts, etc.) and then I’ll get to work on building out the rest of the site.On Friday I’ll send you a link to the site in progress to review how everything looks. At this point links won’t be connected quite yet, as I want to get your sign off on the design work before moving forward with the tech-y stuff. At this point you get to review each page and send me notes on what you want to change.On the next Monday I’ll go in and make your edits, and after that you review it again. You are entitled to unlimited revisions within our 2 week time period, so take advantage!If you’re curious as to why we build sites in 2 weeks,
check out this blog post!
#4. Finishing Up
Once you’re completely happy with how everything looks I’ll finish up connecting all the bits and pieces and double check everything works how it should.Then on Friday we’ll have a one hour training call where I walk you through how everything works on your site (how to update things in the future, how to change fonts, add pictures, etc.) and you can ask any questions you like.This call gets recorded, and when we’re done I place it on a hidden page of your website. That way you don’t have to worry about taking notes during the call, as you can always refer back to the video later on.At this point we’ll connect your domain, choose your Squarespace plan, transfer ownership of the site from me to you, and collect the final payment. You’re now officially launched with your awesome, brand new website!Time to partaaaaayyyy!!!
I hope this sneak peek at my process helps you feel a bit more confident in working with a web designer!
Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions during your consult call. You want to make sure you’re on the same page as your designer and can understand each other.
