How To Collaborate On Your Website

Sort, organize and name your files before sending them to us! This may not seem important, but it is. Even a modest project, at the start, can get large. When we talk about your content elements, it’s easier if we, you and me, and everyone involved, can refer to them by the same unique name.

Emails

If I had a dime for every email I have archived with: “Website Stuff” in the SUBJECT field? (Well, I’d be retired.)

So, please, instead, how about these for examples of “good” email subject field naming:

“Smith Co. Home Page, images attached” (or)
“ABC Corp About Page: resume (attached)” (or)
“BA Photo Wedding Portfolio, bride images (attached)”

You get the idea.

Files

You wouldn’t believe how files and communications can add up. Keeping those important files and emails is critical to good project organization.

Critical to organizing is making sure that we’re speaking the same language and that it makes sense…to both of us. When you send your files, makes sure they have a unique name and that it relates to your project.

Let’s say the project is a website for Smith Co. Keep it short and unique.

This works: SmHM001 (Smith+Home[Page]+1st image)
This doesn’t: DSCM20120904

You get the idea.

Nothing makes a great website come to life like great images.  Typically, the bigger the better.  The absolute smallest current computer monitors display between 1024 to 1680 pixels wide (2/2014) and that’s changing quickly…screens are getting bigger (and smaller!), so it’s useful if the images you provide are nice and big, particularly if we will be displaying the images full-screen.

We recommend images larger than our largest potential viewer…

currently 2500 pixels, perhaps a bit larger, is typically adequate for optimal display without requiring downsizing.

(If images are too big, they can require resizing to keep pages from taking overly long to load, but there’s no increasing the quality of a tiny image when you enlarge it…quite the opposite, in fact.)

When you upload images to WordPress, it automatically creates thumbnails, medium size images, large images plus it retains the original. By providing nice big originals, you take advantage of a full range of options available for each image. This can be very useful if that image is going to display as a thumbnail in a blog feed, a medium or large on the page (or post) and then the original is handily available for dramatic enlargements. It’s a great feature…don’t pass up the opportunity to use it fully.

Large images have large file sizes. Talk to us about free access to our DropBox to upload your images securely and privately “to the cloud.” We will then retrieve them for use in your project.

Low-cost Excellent Photographs Gives Your Website An Unbelievable Edge

If you don’t have images of useful content, quality and/or size available, there are a number of companies that offer reasonably priced “stock” photographic images for purchase. Ask us about our stock photography packages for your project. You can’t afford NOT to use great images!

You are our best resource in getting to know you…and your business. Knowing your preferences, needs & wants helps us to put together an effective design that appropriately conveys your business, your clients and your goals.

Here’s some handy info. to provide us

• Color preferences?
• Look & feel?
• Theme or style?
• Your competitors website addresses (URLs)
• Websites you’d like to emulate (and WHY you like them)

What you’ve done in the past can be incredibly useful as we put together what you’re doing NOW.

Please allow us access to any identity information you’ve used previously that can help us convey your identity, your “brand”:

• logos
• business cards
• signage
• letterhead
• brochures
• mailers
• email marketing (Constant Contact, Adweber, MailChimp templates, etc.)