mindgraffiti

Tim has built up a formidable library of web designs after the last rush for new websites began in January. As busy season slides into a slow season, he suggested that we take all of our unused designs and post them to a website. Then Rich could direct new website clients to the [now named] Style Gallery* and pick a look. Once they choose one, that particular look is immediately taken down and customized to the new client’s demands: add their logo, change the color scheme if requested, etc. We posted our designs and dropped the original files in a single folder, numbered instead of named, in an effort to follow the advice Keep It Simple, Stupid.

The new Style Gallery site would benefit both sides: clients get to choose from an array of looks to find one that suits their tastes, instead of the typical route, where we used to send them three designs to pick from. For the web team, it saves us time to have a specific drop folder where all the designs can be found instead of trying to track down the needle in a hay stack. Tim and I used to save our individual designs on the hard drives of our own computers. A shared drop folder means we no longer have to hunt down where that durned file that randomly disappeared.

Now all our new clients get the benefits of a painless process when they say “I want a website. I have no idea what it will look like, but I’ll know it when I see it.” It took Rich a wonderfully brief five minutes to explain to the customer where to go to find the Style Gallery and then explain that these are exclusive designs- not templates- that will disappear from the Gallery once it is chosen. The client found one a few moments later. Rich said ok, I will inform my developer and have them put that on the test site for you today. After Tim sliced up the PhotoShop file and built the layout for the web, Rich e-mailed them a few hours after the initial contact to inform them that the look was online, waiting for their approval. If they approved it, please send along your content and we will have it live in no time.

Wow. Even I was impressed. Not everyone is going to be so easy, I know. Not all problems and solutions for every client will be as painless, I know. But I have to admit, it was a great start to a new process.

*Note: If you want to see the designs Tim and I have built, you can check them out here. The sites marked as NEW! are ones we have built. The other sites are a mix: some of the designs we inherited from our predecessors, with a few of ours sprinkled in between.