Matrix Group International

Month: July 2013

  • How Long Does It Take to Design a Website?

    How Long Does It Take to Design a Website?

    Dollar signWhen I’m presenting to prospects and clients, I almost always get the question “How long will it take to design my website?” As you can imagine, the answer is usually “It depends.” Depends on what?

    In my experience, a design timeline will depend on the scale of the project, the amount of content to migrate, the complexity of the navigation and design, the turnaround time needed to provide feedback, the number of integrations with third party systems, and testing resources and availability.

    When pressed, however, here are the guidelines I usually share with clients:

    Blogs are usually the fastest to get online. Why? Because blogs usually have a simple structure, they usually follow the style of the main organization website, and they have predictable elements: recent posts, blog archive, about the blogger, RSS feed, tag cloud, and social media feeds. Using a blog platform like Blogger, you can get a blog up in about an hour. But if you’re looking to create a blog with a custom theme, it usually takes 2-4 weeks. If it’s urgent, we can get a blog up in a matter of days, assuming the content is ready, the client provides quick feedback, and there is agreement about the blog strategy.

    Website facelifts can be fast or they can take time. At Matrix Group, a website facelift involves updating the site’s design elements, but you’re making minimal changes to the navigation and structure and you’re not changing the content management system (CMS). Facelifts can take week or two, or they can take a couple of months. Facelifts get derailed when the decision is made to drastically change the navigation, change CMS platforms, add significant new functionality, and update a lot of the content. Since clients generally need facelifts done fast, we try to never let the timeline go past two or three months.

    A standard redesign for us is one that involves updating the navigation based on user feedback, giving the site a new look and feel, migrating to a new CMS, migrating content from the old site to the new site, and adding new functionality. Since most of our clients also have or want to have member or customer portals, we usually integrate with some type of CRM system. These redesigns tend to take between 6-9 months. The most time-consuming tasks are often: creating an inventory of the entire site, migrating content, updating content, and ironing out all of the details of the integrations. Not having all the content ready is the number one reason these design projects get delayed.

    Design projects with lots of integrations and/or custom programming take the most time. Matrix Group recently completed a redesign project that involved a rebranding effort, migration of close to 10,000 pages, a move to a new CMS, and integrations with several vendors. This project took about a year. In general, I recommend to clients that projects never have a timeline of longer than 12 months. After 12 months, project staff get burned out, they start doubting that the project will ever launch, and they get sick of the design. If your project will legitimately take more than 12 months because of the scope of the work, I recommend breaking up the project into phases and launching functionality over time.

    Are there things vendors and clients can do to speed up timelines? Absolutely! My top tips:

    • Establish a deadline and give the project a sense of urgency.
    • Start working on your content from day one.
    • Start integration discussions early in the project.
    • Schedule design presentations and check-ins with senior staff ahead of time so that you don’t waste time on scheduling meetings and to keep the project moving.
    • Have a clear decision-making process.
    • Line up testing resources close to the time of launch.

    How long did your last redesign project take and what lessons did you learn?

     

     

  • How Designing a Home is Like Designing a Website

    How Designing a Home is Like Designing a Website

    Colleen Stone's dogs
    Colleen brought her dogs, Charli and Anya, to the Friday Forum. These cutie pies are on the Stone House Board of Directors

    I had the pleasure of welcoming Colleen Stone, Principal at Stone House , to Matrix Group last week. I invited Colleen to come in and do a Friday Forum (lunch and learn) for my staff because while my team was working with Colleen on her website, I was struck by how similar her process is to ours. She designs homes, we design websites. We both make it a priority to get to know our customers and create something beautiful and extremely user-friendly. I called Colleen an Information Architect for home design. Here were my key takeaways from Colleen’s presentation.

    Renovating a home is a big decision

    • Most people don’t renovate to sell. They renovate to make it better.
    • Renovations usually involve pain and suffering so do what you can to make the process less stressful
    • Renovating a home is intimate. You need to know the who, why, what and when of the home.

    When gathering requirements

    Gathering requirements is critical element of every design job. Here’s her formula for success:

    • Set the tone for the first meeting by making the client comfortable. She brings dogs and instead of doing an interview, she has a conversation.
    • You  need to gather data, i.e., how many bedrooms, bathrooms, etc. but most importantly, you need to develop a communication pattern with the client. This is the most important aspect of the project because this sets the foundation for getting to where the client wants to be.
    • Listen really hard, don’t do so much talking.
    • Ask questions in a random order. People give more honest answers if they don’t just go down the checklist. They will answer from their heart.
    • Walk the home with your client and talk about what works and what is not working.

    Each family has a culture and a style

    Colleen says that some designers develop a signature style; their customers want that signature style in their homes. Other designers strive to create something that is unique for each client. Colleen is part of the latter group. She believes:

    • Each family has a cultural and style. Some families are formal, some are more casual.
    • Your job as a designer is to figure out the elements of your client’s culture and identify what they don’t know and see.
    • The design part of the job means translating that culture into the design of a home.

    Good designers educate their clients

    Colleen believes that good designers devote 50% of their time with clients to education. Clients have to make umpteen million decisions and they can’t make umpteen million good decisions unless they are educated. When a client asks for something that, in your opinion, isn’t a good idea:

    • Sometimes, you educate them on why it’s bad.
    • Sometimes, you take their bad idea and turn it into a good idea.
    • Sometimes, you just flat out tell them it’s a bad idea.
    • Sometimes, clients surprise you and you learn something in the process.

    Putting yourself in your clients’ shoes

    I asked Colleen about techniques she uses to really get to know here clients. My favorite tidbits:

    • When designing a kitchen,  Colleen asks her clients to cook for her so she can see the flow of the cooking, especially if there are multiple people cooking together.
    • Colleen strives to create beautiful, graceful living spaces so that you can see elegant views from every vantage point, as you move through a house. Colleen asks clients how they move through the house, when the kids get home, where the traffic jams happen, etc.
    • In apartments, the biggest issue is always storage. She looks for practical and pretty storage solutions since most apartments usually don’t provide adequate storage.

    I’m looking at the work of architects and interior designers in a whole, new light thanks to Colleen. Be sure to check out samples of Colleen’s work on her website.