Okay so you have a design meeting with the web designers coming up… you’ve got a few ideas floating around but not quite sure what exactly you want- so how do you get the most out of your meeting? Preparation!
1. Know exactly what you want your website to achieve. What is its aim: Brand awareness? Increase sales? Customer Service?
2. Look at your current company image and branding, establish whether you want to continue with this or not. Developing a new website is the perfect opportunity to have a brand overhaul, many web design companies now offer branding consultancy and can assist in the development of brand guidelines.
3. Create a detailed description of what you want the website to do. Have a list of the various things you want users to be able to achieve and do on the website.
4. Provide the design company with as much information about your company as possible; who your stakeholders are, what your mission statement is, what your future goals are etc. Your website should form part of your overall marketing mix, it is a business tool in itself therefore to make the most of it you need to ensure that it fits in with your current and future plans for the company.
5. Who are your main competitors and what sort of online profile have they achieved so far?
6. Have a specific image of how you want the website to look? Create a mood board with all various design elements and inspirations that you have for your new website.
7. Put together some of your favourite website, scour the web for websites you like and which inspire you. See any functionality or features that you like then take a note and tell your web designer about it, it may be something you have seen on a random website that has no relation to the industry you currently work in but elements of it could still be adapted for your website.
8. How much do you really know about web design? How much do you want to know? Compile a list of all the different questions you want to ask your designer, once you get into the crux of the meeting you may become bamboozled by all the chat and forget all the points you wished to raise. A design meeting is not only about the design team getting information from you it is about you getting information from the design team.
9. Bring along any corporate literature; pamphlets, brochures and flyers all form part of your offline marketing and your online marketing should reflect this.
10. Have a good look at what your design company have already produced, perhaps contact them prior to the meeting to request further information on any specific website so you can gauge what they did and how they did it.
As the Christmas lights start going on in the streets and the high street retailers begin decking the halls with boughs of bargains and pretty decorations, we online retailers too need to start thinking of Crimbo and prepping our websites for the masses of customers looking to snap up a bargain present for their loved one. 
