Author: grayle

💻 Every few years, companies will feel the itch to refresh their website’s design. This may be done because of a drop on website performance metrics, or simply because someone in that company felt bored; but before embarking on finding inspiration for a new web designer, consider the fact that changing your website’s design may impact customer trust: after seeing your website, they may be surprised if your other advertisements, store signage, business cards, apps, etc. look and feel different.

Potential customers may feel they’re being scammed; trustworthy companies appear orderly, and their overall design language should rhyme and be systematic. We should ensure that the design language is maintained among our marketing collaterals, and a website re-design should be part of a wider digital design system initiative.

Typically, you (the client) will:

• Seek vendors by searching for them online, or
• Open the job for tendering by interested parties.

Vendors will usually submit a pitch document to you; as a Presentation, a Document, or an interactive mockup.

Next, you’ll have to evaluate which web design vendors to choose. Aside from evaluating vendors with proven performance by automatically scoring the best-foot-forward work in their portfolio, you’ll want to evaluate their pitch deck.

• Do they have a portfolio of previous web design clients? (We can evaluate real-world performance scores for websites they’ve designed.)
• What CMS (Content Management System) do they recommend? (This is the most pressing issue with revamping the website.)
• What comprises their recommended technology stack? (This affects website performance, as judged by Google.)
• Do they have a proposed Information Architecture (Sitemap) for the new website? (This would inform the overall UX, not just pretty graphics.)
• Do they have proven use cases for accessibility? (Malaysian bandwidth concern, and language models.)
• Do they provide web design-as-a-service (maintenance support)? Or is this a one-off web design-per-se (template)?
• Don’t judge by how popular each vendor’s social media is.