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Web development invoice for Research and Development

today I'm going to be showing you the exact web design process that I use as a creative director I'll show you every single Nuance of how this process shifts when I'm working at a creative agency versus when I am freelancing for my clients and I'll talk about the differences between the two to ensure that your needs and your client's needs are met from where I get my website inspiration to how I approach strategy and mood boarding this video truly has it all hey friends welcome back to to the channel where we work to become better creatives together let's dive in here's the process that I run through the only thing about this overarching process that really changes between freelance and agency is the timeline the turnaround times and the number of internal meetings all of the other stages more or less remain the same from a broad sense regardless if this is an agency project or a freelance project let me break them down phase one research number two client takeoff phase three strategy phase four mood boarding phase five wireframes phase six the website design and phase seven development and launch now let me break each one of these down for you first up initial research now going into a client briefing either at an agency or freelance we always want to begin with a little bit of research once the client has signed I start by looking into their brand on all platforms to to ensure that I get a sense of how their holistic presence is being displayed for their target audience I check things like their website their Tik Tok their Instagram every active platform that they have I have a look at this allows me to have an understanding of where they are who they're speaking to and then that gives me a threshold to understand when I have conversations with the client that way if there's a gap between where they want to be and where they currently are I'll have a good understand understanding of that when I'm freelancing I will start by sending out a brand questionnaire template that I have for clients to fill out before we even get on our first call together at the agencies I've worked at the project manager or accounts person will send out the agency templated version of this these templates all vary a little bit but for the most part it includes questions about the client's brand their target audience and the objectives of the project now let me break the questionnaire down you want to begin by asking some general questions often it's a good idea to understand the foundation or background story of the business where it came from its history and why it was founded in the first place then asking about the future of the company what is their Vision in 5 10 15 20 years what are the some of the goals that they have this gives you a good understanding of the direction that the business is heading now let's ask some questions to understand what value the business provides a question here might be what problems does your business solve for your customer we then ask about the unique selling points often this question will look like why would a customer choose you or what sets you apart from your competition another area to confirm is their target audience this is a little bit of a tricky one because sometimes business owners will think of their target audience as one set of people people and not always understand that there's a whole untapped potential other group of customers that they just weren't aware of in an agency setting our strategy team will confirm this by doing research often they'll do interviews they'll look at studies or look at Social listening they'll then use all of this data to identify the current or core target audience but then they'll also provide notes about the secondary target audience and then the untapped potential of a third target audience when I'm freelancing often I don't have this capacity so generally speaking we'll just focus on the first and second target audience unless there's a strategist who I'm freelancing with with me as well which thankfully does actually often happen next up you want to ask your clients who their main competitors are it's not a bad idea to get an understanding about them from your client so asking any follow-up questions here is a great method things like what do you like about them what do you dislike about them or why might one of your customers go to one of your competitors if your client has established their branding uh hopefully they have something called brand guidelines getting a copy at this point is going to save you a ton of time if not you're going to need to ask them about their branding I personally like to start by asking them to describe the essence of the brand in singular words things like trustworthy edgy luxury friendly the next set of questions in the question air often focus on tactical elements things like timeline and deliverables if you can confirm if the client has done any brand guidelines like I mentioned if they have asset libraries if they have an established tone of voice basically you're looking for anything that is going to be integral to building out the website to ensure that it's on brand and cohesive next up the client kickoff meeting when I'm freelancing or at an agency I love to be in the room with a client to hear these answers directly from them great way to do this is by using the questionnaire as a guide for the meeting and then addressing questions that you or the team may have about their answers Additionally you need to use this meeting to solidify the objective of the project what are you making why are you making it and who is it for without this clarifying step you won't make a website that actually is impactful for your client's business so getting on the same page as your client ensures that you won't be burning the budget later on making revision after revision strategy phase this is quite honestly one of the most important parts of the entire process despite not having a single piece of design in it this part is all about ensuring that the website is going to be impactful and actually do something for the client and their business every single creative decision that you make moving forward needs to be driven by what you discover and solidify during this phase from your typography choices your layout your photography a huge part of any graphic designer's job is to have some grasp of human psychology storytelling and stales regardless if you're a specialized designer that is part of a team you still need to include all of this within your process and your approach now the main thing with this phase that you're going to want to focus in on is again who that target audience is and what problems you're solving for them through the business the main thing to keep in mind with this phase is that the client will likely know far more about elements of this more than you but at other points they'll also be getting caught up and limited by their own thinking for example when it comes to their competitors or their target audiences a lot of times clients haven't verified these elements by data so maybe operating on false assumptions but at the same time your clients know their business inside and out far better than you do so this should very much be a collaborative process now when it comes to the strategy understanding the audience is key not only what problems do they need solving but also where in the decision-making process they are at sometimes this is called a customer funnel and essentially it's understanding the psychological state that the majority of customers are going to be coming to you with there are four main stages of this funnel there's awareness consideration conversion and advocacy sometimes called loyalty let's say that some of our potential clients are in the awareness phase meaning they're just learning about your business now maybe this is the first time they've ever run into this particular type of problem and they're trying to find a solution for example let's say you've just had your first baby and you are totally unsure of Brands but you know you need a car seat so you Google car seat and start getting hit with search results on Google you see ads on Instagram featuring various Brands you're starting to become aware of what's out there next up here's an example of the consideration phase they've heard of your business they're aware of your competitors and right now they're starting to do their own personal research to understand which brand is right for them so let's go back to the car seat example you already know of a few Brands now cuz you're in the consideration phase and you're finding out exactly which one is right for you you've decided that you want to compare safety price colors and then a few extra features things like cup holders or swivel seats now let's talk about competitive analysis during this phase I'll often go through the top three to five competitors and do a brief analysis I want to see what platforms they show up on and how they appear so things like Tik Tok Instagram their website Etc during this analysis I want to focus on three main things I want to see what their strengths are I want to see how they position themselves from a messaging perspective and thirdly I want to see how they show up from a design perspective I want to ensure that when we line up our client's brand next to theirs our client stands out in order to have an impactful and meaningful presence in the market our client needs to be memorable and unique now a word of caution here when competitors are doing well they're succeeding it can be very tempting for other businesses to copy them which is not a good long-term strategy even if they see a slight increase in numbers consumers will mix up the two brands in their minds and their brand recall will be shot not good if you're seeing your client start to dip into this phase do your best to navigate them out as soon as possible the next phase is the mood boarding phase by building on the foundation of the previous strategy work that we've just done to date you want to factor in your market research your client sence brand and creative analysis of competitors to form a unique creative approach the best form of this is a mood board it includes a multitude of things from typography choices to color palettes even layout and animation examples this is really where we're going to be getting on the same page as our client when it comes to the actual look and feel of the design again you want to make sure that you're leveraging all of these choices to home back to the original business strategy that we had in place I like to pull inspiration from websites like awards.com s Inspire Godly Pinterest fwa I love mind Sparkle magazine there's so many incredible design inspiration websites out there that you can pull from if you're working with a big client with a huge budget sometimes it is a good idea to pull a portion of that budget into this phase and make some bespoke pieces for the client next up wireframe and user flow this phas is huge because it essentially takes all of the psychological analysis and lays it out in a physical space I will say many clients struggle with wireframing because it can be quite difficult to understand so the way that I get through this is I like to preface and show them a blueprint of a home and then next to it on the next slide I'll show the final design of the home or the room so they can understand the broad concept then I like to show them a wireframe that I've done for a website in the past and then on the next slide or next to it I'll put the final design this really explains the purpose of this phase and I really want to make sure that they understand this will save us a lot of budget later on and it's going to naturally Elevate the final product they need to be on board with this phase so I do my best to really take my time and explain it to them the wireframe phase is very much where we start to consider things like SEO the flow of Storytelling and the nature of communicating to each of the audiences for example if I go back to the original example of the car seat let's say that I know we've got some ads out there on Instagram we know that people are in the consideration phase and that safety is a huge concern number one concern for parents out there right now I'm going to ensure that the SEO of this website is going to touch on safety so that the flow of the website the flow of the user of that particular target audience is going to make sense for this website we're also going to ensure that the way in which you consume the story of the brand the products are told to you in a digestible and convincing way if the content is all over the place and things aren't kind of jumbled together then a story isn't going to be effectively communicated flow really matters here which is the whole purpose of this phase when I've worked with agencies and budgets are a bit bigger often they will build out the user flow for the top three target audience profiles with key communication pieces or questions that they may have in their mind that we need to answer at every step of the flow this way to ensure the flow addresses their main concerns we build that out into the wireframes you want to ensure that you're addressing each of the questions that the target audience may have or barriers of entry hesitations and then Define any actions that you want them to take this is really where the site map comes in and this is a key part of the wireframing process your site map can vary can be huge very very big like from a big organization like for example Apple they'll have multiple main Pages multiple sub Pages landing pages product pages or it can be very small and simplistic to be honest it really comes down to what is best for your client's business okay now let's talk about website design once all of the work has been signed off on it is now time to put everything together the colors the typography the images logos the wireframes objectives it all comes together at this point when I'm in an agency setting often times we will have a copywriter join in to help write the content and at other times you know during freelancing sometimes I'll take a little bit of that myself I'll collaborate with the client but really it can be all about what works best for you what works best for your budget and what works best for your client assuming you're able to hit those storytelling objectives now me personally I do all of my website designs in figma that's what works best for me and I love it during this phase you want to hit two main things firstly you want to ensure that you are designing for various sizes like mobile and tablet don't just do desktop and the second thing that you want to do is ensure that you are keeping a running document of notes for any interactions or animations this is going to be huge for creating your development document later on if you want to level up game I strongly recommend getting in the habit of creating even basic Design Systems and reusing components throughout the web design process as it speeds up your process it speeds up the development process and it streamlines user flow throughout the website users won't have to learn new user experience modules at every turn it will make their lives easier in terms of absorbing and remembering key pieces of information that you want to communicate to them the most obvious places to reuse elements are going to be your footer your buttons navigation and then any other components or modules that you expect to see on multiple Pages throughout ensuring consistency of typography colors sizes and padding is also key this not only benefits the development process and the QA process but most importantly it makes the experience way more enjoyable for the end user if you're new to web design I would strongly strongly recommend doing a dive into accessibility and accessibility guidelines there are so many reasons to care about accessibility of your website first and foremost is that if you're not and you're not considering it then you're not designing an inclusive experience you're naturally going to alienate many potential customers for your client and additionally depending on the country that you're in there are many legal repercussions if you do not once you get your clients to sign off on the design then the development process begins either this is done through a team of developers if you're at an agency or if you're freelancing then often it will be another freelancer or company that has been um freelanced out I believe strongly in maintaining a good relationship with your developer as this is where your designs either live or die the QA process comes near the end of the development process and it is to be taken very seriously on your part I want you to remember that a developer is not a designer so there are going to be tons of details and nuances that change the feel of the site this is exactly where the component system system design and development documents are so integral and then you are ready for launch if you haven't already please give this video a like And subscribe and if you've enjoyed this please let me know in the comments I'd love to hear from you and let me know what you would like to see next as always thanks for watching