I have re-thought, re-worked and re-designed this website a total of 5 times since its conception, roughly once per year. Each time in an attempt to create a better web site for my company.

The bane of most web designer is true of me also, I’m never happy and am by far my most demanding, awkward client, often I’m starting another before I’ve even finished the last.

When I took the current version of this website live a couple of weeks ago I got an email from one of my clients wondering where my last version had gone, she preferred that one over the current, that’s the problem with designing for yourself, its the wrong approach, its not me I am trying to please, its mix of both new customers and existing web design peers. I liked the last version, it had impact, I redesigned because although the homepage was good, the design did not work on any of the more content heavy pages, everything was just too big.

When designing for clients you end up designing for two people, you and the client, whilst this isn’t the best way, its better than doing it or one.

What you really need to do is find out what the sites customers want, they are the people you are trying to impress, in fact they are the whole reason you are creating a website at all.

But how? you ask, try one of the following ~

1. Pretend that you are a customer.  This is the cheapest (its free) and can be useful, sit down and think about your customer, be detailed, who is he/she? once you have an idea of who they are, work out why they would want to come to your website, then, how are they going to get there and finally what are the going to want to do when they are there. Its likely that you will have more than one customer type who will have different reasons for coming to you and want different things, that’s fine, work your way through them all individually. Doing all this will help you identify the important things on your website, you can then make sire that these are easily accessible.
2. Ask your current customers. This is pretty easy to do and in some cases can work. Put a feedback form or survey on your website, you may have to give people an incentive to fill it in and be prepared that most won’t. If you do manage to get data back though it can be invaluable in finding out what your customers want.
3. Ask strangers. This can be expensive but if done well will be far more useful than the previous two. Get strangers to sit down in front of your website and ask them to do something, recording their actions etc. can be very useful in discovering areas of your website which are not very good.

Even if you don’t like what people say about your website it is always worth listening, and the beauty of a website over other forms of advertising or media is that it can be changed and improved pretty easily.

Peace out.

Automattic inc. The whizz kids whom invented Wordpress, Keep an up to date list of vetted Wordpress consultants, whose services they recommend to anyone contacting them for commercial Wordpress related projects. Edge Designs is now included on that list as a recommended Wordpress consultancy firm.

We are only the 2nd Uk based company to be included, and are feeling pretty pleased with ourselves right now.

Evolution not Revolution As we already have business cards etc. which use the logo and colour scheme from the last redesign I couldn’t change things too drastically

When I decided to take the plunge and work for myself as a web professional full time in March of this year one of the first things I did was design my brand. Even though prior to this I had a website (that in itself went through 3 definite redesigns, I had been freelancing alongside my day job for around 4 years after all) the design had never been anything more than whatever I was interested in at the time.

When web design became my day job I relished the notion that I would have more time to spend working on both the design and content of my business site and I began designing.

Unfortunately I had made one significant mistake in all of this, my assumption that working as a web designer full time would give me more time was way off the mark. What actually happened, as I am sure those of you whom have done simlilar things will already know, is that now that I was relying solely on my work as a web designer for my income I spent all my time doing client work trying to make enough money to eat and when finally I had finished all of that the last thing I wanted to do was design for myself.

This had a pretty damaging effect on the last version of my website, it meant that what was supposed to be a well thought out carefully implemented design process turned into a rather large mess, things would lurch forward between client work and stagnate again until the next break in the clouds. What was even worse was that once I had started there was know going back, I needed a website. Without one my chances of impressing new clients would be severely damaged especially since, as a new company all my work was for local small business, my website needed to be impressive enough to allow me to bid for larger projects with confidence. The fact that I needed things online yesterday meant that I had little time to test things properly meaning my original thinking and ideas were not fully realized. All in all the previous design ended up being too large and too messy (the grid was none existent and the vertical rhythm forgotten).

What your seeing now is my answer to these problems, its not finished, but its finished enough to be online, it can evolve over time. With the 5^th iteration I have worked with what I had before, I’ve cleaned it up and have hopefully produced something more elegant, more mature and I hope you like it.

I am planning to document the different aspects of the design in future posts, I have done some new things with Wordpress that I have never done before and I am keen to write about those, I also want to write more about my experiences in setting up as a lone web developer / designer.

sharptechnology.co.uk has gone live, the website is a wordpress powered business site with a business orientated blog, news section, and section for the company’s services and case studies. The site was completed from start to finish in under a week (who says you need sleep). View the sharptechnology.co.uk portfolio entry »     

Reading through a back copy of Readers Digest the other day I came across an article on the body paintings of artist Guido Daniele, his hand animals really sparked my imagination and like the good host I am I decided to share them with all of you guys.

Elephant ~ European advertising campaign Schroeders ~ 2002

Found via: guidodaniele.com

Edge Designs has been chosen by David Swain to design and  build a website to showcase his consultancy services, the site will also include articles that David has had published, lectures that he has given and a blog area. 

derbyshire masonry and reclamation.co.uk has gone live, the website is a online brochure style website for the local family run company of the same name. View the derbyshiremasonryandreclamation.co.uk portfolio entry »

tinacooper.co.uk has gone live, the website (renamed from classical gas) is a showcase for local solo classical singer and lead singer of local group Imisti, Tina Cooper. View the tinacooper.co.uk portfolio entry »

Edge Designs has been chosen by local singer Tina Cooper to create a website showcasing her solo career singing as Classical Gas.

We have redesigned our website, the site is an evolution of the old, it includes information on our services, examples of previous work, a regularly updated blog and a means of contacting us. Please tell us what you think by commenting on this news item. As this is a new site, we would appreciate it if you could let us know about any bugs you find.