Make It Easy Working With a Digital Media Agency

If technology is not your strong point, it can be very intimidating to work with a digital media agency during the planning, design and development of your corporate website. I have sketched out a simple to follow guide in the hope that it makes life easier for all parties involved during the process.

 

A digital media agency often charges by the hour, so when producing your brief try to make it as concise as possible. You may feel that you are doing all the hard work; but your are employing the agency to design and development your website, not to second guess your business information in an attempt to fill the gaps.

Image Collation

When supplying your high resolution images make sure they are labelled clearly. A photograph should ideally be saved as a .jpg image, but a .gif or .png can be used if necessary.

If the content of your website will contain a lot of photographs, then it may be beneficial to employ the services of a professional photographer. If this does not fit your budget then make sure all digital images are taken in a well lit and uncluttered room.

And, although image manipulation software programs are very powerful tools nowadays; it is important to have clear original photographs to begin with.

When supplying logos, illustrations or diagrams, they should be in a vector format to enable re-scaling without loss of quality. The format for these images should be .eps (encapsulated postscript).

It is not advisable to provide printed items that need to be scanned, as the quality will be compromised. This will lead to more work being carried out and higher costs.

If you have existing concepts, designs and house style rules then make sure these are shared with your digital media agency, especially if they are to follow the corporate brand or style. Make all raw files and associated images, fonts etc available to your agency.

Where file sizes are large and you find that you are unable to email images, documents etc, consider an online file sharing cloud where project assets can be shared between you and your agency.

Copy and Content

It may seem like an arduous task, but providing your digital media agency with full text content, product information and pricing will save an enormous amount of time in the long run. Make sure you have covered all bases and that your agency has received everything they require before they begin.

Designing a website without knowing the volume and nature of the content is like designing a house without knowing the number of people who are going to live there and how much space will be needed.

Things may require tweaking a little later (which cannot be helped in most cases), but the digital design agency will be able to make a much better informed decision about the size and nature of the website; and will make allowances for that at a much earlier stage.

All content that is supplied for inclusion in the website should be proof read thoroughly. Make sure all references to brand names and products are consistent throughout. Use clear headings, paragraph structures and make sure all images are referenced by their file names rather than being inserted into the document.

Establish which software programs the agency uses for their word processing etc, and supply your content in a compatible format.

If data is required for a database or backend system make sure you have spoken to the developers at the agency so that your content can be used with the minimum of fuss.

It is highly likely that you will need to place terms and conditions, delivery instructions, returns, agreement terms etc. These will need to be in place before your website can go live. Get them written and approved straight away.

It's Good to Talk

It is important to communicate, so you should make sure you converse with the agency regularly. Don't use this time to make incessant changes; these will soon push back your launch date and inflate your final bill. Don't forget, this should have all been done before the project started.

Make sure that testing is carried out on coding at every stage. No doubt your digital media agency will have structures in place to test code, but always make yourself available for testing, especially as websites are now viewed and used on many different formats like smart phones and tablets.

It's a Plan

Large projects can soon get out of hand, pushing back deadlines and incurring extra costs. Before any project is started, make sure everyone involved has an in depth understanding of how the project should proceed. Get it all down on paper with a clear timetable; highlighting defined milestones that all parties can agree upon.

Into Tomorrow

Don't let your website hold you back in the future. Technology moves on at an ever increasing pace. Things that are not possible now may soon become common place. Try to build as much flexibility into your website as possible so that future innovations can be seamlessly added. Whatever they may be.

Protection

Provide as much legal protection in writing as you can for both parties. This will include non-disclosure agreements, contracts, briefs, emails, testing, content and bills.

It is a sad fact that not all professional relationships will end well, but those that do can help strengthen your business. Your digital media agency will have expert knowledge in areas of business where you have little or none and vice versa. A strong and friendly relationship with your agency can yield massive dividends for all concerned.