You have not taken the hiring of a professional designer lightly. Whether you’re a tiny or large firm, it’s often a considerable investment.
While you engaged a professional for a reason and should trust their judgement, you want to ensure that the design you pay for is worth the money you spend and will be effective in generating leads, building loyalty, and growing your brand. To guarantee you get the design you want for your company, the following are some questions to ask yourself before finalising your design:
1. Is it communicating the message?
Regardless of the medium – business card, flyer, website, or email – you commissioned this design with a specific goal in mind. When your designer returns the design, you should examine it and ask yourself, “Does this successfully communicate the information I’m trying to convey?” This is something that you should be able to determine rather fast. If you must examine the design and determine if it successfully communicates your message, the likelihood is that it doesn’t.
While the design’s aesthetics are important, its function is much more critical. If visitors are unsure about the action you want them to perform after seeing the design, engagement will be low or non-existent. If the design is effective, a single look will convince you that “Yes, it clearly communicates my message.”
2. Will my audience connect with it?
When your designer begins work on your design, he or she should question, “Who is the desired target audience?” This is almost certainly your consumer base, and you should have a strong idea of who they are and what they want, as well as having communicated this to your designer so they can produce a more effective design. To make an impact on your audience, your design must communicate with them in the most effective manner possible. For instance, if your audience is young children, you’ll want bright colours and pictures, yet if your target is B2B finance, you’ll want your website to look serious and trustworthy via the use of current design.
3. Is it a page that is interesting to read?
Is the design instantly appealing to you? No? If that is the case, why would it attract your audience’s attention? There is much too much material, advertising, and design out there for many individuals to ignore, scrolling straight over it in their browser, email, or newsfeed. To capture your audience’s attention, your design must be high-quality, valuable, and distinctive. If the design you’ve been provided does not include all of these elements, you’ll need to start again.
4. Is it possible to defend your designer’s design choices?
A designer should always be able to articulate why they selected specific fonts, colours, pictures, and content for a particular design. If you have a worry about a certain aspect of the design, your designer should be able to instantly set your mind at rest by describing how they approached it. Bear in mind that you choose a professional designer for a reason – they are professionals. While they may have approached the design differently than you do, you should believe their professional advice as long as they can support their reasons.
5. Is the design subjected to A/B testing?
A/B testing is the technique of presenting two (or more) distinct creative approaches / layouts to determine which provokes the strongest response. While A/B testing is not required for every design work but for certain bigger projects, if you’re spending a significant amount of money, you want to ensure that the best design possible gets released. This is not in terms of beauty or originality, but of accomplishing objectives.
A/B testing enables you to minimise needless risks by determining which design will be the most successful and provide the highest return on investment prior to launching. Whether your campaign’s objectives are short-term conversions, long-term consumer loyalty, or metrics, having many designs and A/B testing them is the greatest approach to assure a positive return.
I hope you found my five tips useful. If you are thinking of a new design project, why not get in touch with Reform and we will be delighted to help you through the process. paul@reformcreative.co.uk
Paul