If you want a great web design experience, some of the responsibility lies in your hands as the client. One of the best things you can do to help your project go smoothly is… be prepared!

When you start thinking about your soon-to-be website, your excitement might fade when you realize you don’t really know where to begin. What should you do first? And how should you organize your thoughts so that they’ll be useful to your designer? Here are some tips:

Create a Basic Outline

Start by opening up your favorite word processor and mapping out your table of contents. What should your navigation look like and what content will your site consist of? A basic table of contents might look like this:

1. Home
2. About Us
3. Archives
4. Links
5. Contact Us

You get the idea.

Next, take some time to expand on each of those sections by writing a little about what you expect to be on each of the pages. If you don’t have all your content ready yet, that’s okay! But some description is better than nothing.

Compile Your Content

Creating a table of contents will help you see the larger picture. Now that you know what kind of content you’ll have, it’s time to start producing that content. If you have an About Us page, type up your biography or mission statement. If you have an Archives page, decide if you’d like to archive by month, year, and/or category.

And don’t forget about your Homepage! Figure out what content is most important and think of the best way to deliver it. When someone comes to your site, they should immediately be able to find what they’re looking for. Long winded welcome messages are unnecessary. Get to the point and show them the goods!

Collect Your Assets (Images, PDFs, Videos, etc.)

If you want quality photos on your site, you’re going to have to provide them to your designer so they have something to work with. Visit a stock photography site and purchase your photos so that they’re available for your designer to use. And if videos are a big part of your site, you’ll want to have a few of those ready too — if possible.

Prepare Some Direction

If you’ve ever experienced working with a great designer, you might start to think that they know what you want better than you do. But expecting as much is unrealistic. To make sure your designer has a good sense of what you’re aiming for, create a list of links to websites that you admire or have elements that you hope to emulate. Make sure you include a description about what it is you like about it.

Here’s an example:

• Hip Web Design (http://www.hipwebdesign.com) — I really love the colors of this site. It pops. I’d like the colors to pop on my site too.

Acquire the Essentials

There are a few technical requirements for starting a new website. I posted an article a while back called “What Do I Need for a Website,” but I’ve broken it down simply here:

1. Hosting
2. Domain name

Typically, you can get both these things at the same time from the same provider. If you aren’t sure what you need, ask your designer/developer before hand.

Once you acquire these, compile a list of user names and passwords that your designer/developer will need to start setting things up for you.

Put It All Together

As a designer, one of the worst things is when a client trickles everything in to you. When content comes in spread out over dozens of emails, it’s easy for things to get lost or over looked.

Once you’ve got everything we’ve discussed above, make sure it’s organized and appropriately labeled. Then, ideally, put it all into one folder and compress it into a ZIP file. If you’ve got a lot of photos or videos to send, you may need to spread this out a little, but when it comes to the basic information, having it well organized and together will let the designer move ahead faster.

You’re Good To Go

Now that you’ve created a nice little package, send it off to your designer. He/she will be grateful that you’ve made such efficient preparations. This will leave more time for your designer to focus on the important things — like designing your site.

If you come to your designer unprepared, they may not be able to attack your project with the high morale needed to produce something genius. Waiting for material and instructions to come in can bog down the entire process and kill your project’s momentum.

And as always… Hip Web Design is standing by.