Wednesday 24 April 2019

5 Steps for Successfully Offboarding Web Design Projects

As you draw closer to the finish line with a website, does your client see it just as clearly as you do? Or are they still wavering on design and copy choices even while you’re in the final stages of QA, or talking about additional features they’ll want to add to the site “some day”?

Unless you are getting paid — and paid well — for every single hour you put into a website, you have to be willing to enforce a final stopping point. If you don’t, your client will undoubtedly play the “What about this? Or this?” game for as long as you allow them to.

And you can’t afford to do that. You have other clients whose websites deserve your attention.

Just as you have created an onboarding process to smoothly kick off a new website project, you must do the same with an offboarding process.

Step 1: Collect Your Final Payment

Once the client has given you the approval on the finished website, you push it live. After some light testing to confirm that all is well on the live domain, it’s time to initiate the offboarding process.

You’ll do this by sending along the last invoice. Better yet, your invoicing software should automatically be configured to do this upon reaching the final project milestone.

My favorite tool to do this with is AND CO.

That’s because you can do everything in here:

  • Create a proposal;
  • Send the contract;
  • Track your time;
  • Send invoices.

Because each of these elements exist within the same place, setting up and scheduling invoices based on your project’s milestones (including the launch date) is really easy to do.

Don’t move on to the next steps until you collect the payment due though. Letting a client go any more than seven days after the project’s end without final payment simply invites them to ask you to do more work.

Step 2: Send the Wrap-up Email

Upon confirming receipt of payment, send your client a wrap-up email.

This doesn’t have to be lengthy. The goal is to get them to schedule the closing call as soon as possible. Something like this should work:

Greetings, [client name]!
I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to build this website for [company name]. I hope you’re just as pleased with it as I am!
I know you’re excited to put this website to work for you now that you have it, but I have just a few things I want to show you as we wrap up.
When you have a moment, please go to my Calendly and schedule a 15-minute Wrap-Up Session for some time this week.
During this call, I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes tour of your website and show you how to edit your content. Afterwards, I will send along the login credentials you need to manage your website along with all of your design assets.
Talk soon.

As I mentioned in the message above, Calendly is the tool I use to simplify my scheduling with clients.

All you have to do is create an event (like “Client Offboarding” or “Client Onboarding”), set up your availability, and then send the link to your clients to pick a time when you’re free. It makes life so much easier.

Step 3: Do the Wrap-Up Video Call

This final call with your client needs to be done over video or, at the very least, a screen-share. For this, I’d suggest using Zoom.

The above example is how I used to do my offboarding calls with WordPress clients.

I’d log into their website and then give them an orientation of all of the key areas they needed to know. I’d show them how to create a post, how to create a page, and explain the difference between the two. I’d also show them important areas like the Media folder, the area to manage Users, and maybe a few other things.

This “training” call is yours to do with as you like. Just make sure the client walks away feeling confident in taking the reins over from you.

Step 4: Deliver the Remaining Pieces

The website is done, you’ve collected the payment, and you’ve had the final call with your client. Now, it’s time to deliver the remaining pieces you owe them.

Logins – If you created any accounts from-scratch (e.g. WordPress, web hosting, social media, etc.), send along the login credentials.

Style guide – Did you create a style guide for the client? Package it up in a professional-looking PDF and send it over in case they decide to work with another designer in the future.

Design assets – Again, on the off chance they work with someone else, you’ll want to send along the design assets you created in their native formats.

Licenses – You may have licensed certain assets during this project, like stock photos or design templates. If that’s the case, you’ll need to bill them for the licenses (if you haven’t already) and transfer ownership to them now.

While you could send these along before the wrap-up call, you run the risk of the clients taking the materials and running away… Only to show up months later wanting to know what all this stuff is, what they’re supposed to do with it, and wondering if you’ll have time to walk them through the website now.

Or they don’t open any of it and then message you months down the line, urgently demanding access to their site, files, etc. To avoid this from happening, clearly label everything and send it along in a shared Dropbox folder.

Even if they lose the link to the Dropbox folder at any point, you don’t have to repackage up all their stuff again. You can simply grab the link from your end and resend.

Step 5: Follow Up in 60 Days

Set a reminder in your project management template to follow up with website clients 60 days after the wrap-up. This will give them enough time to sit with the website and either:

  • Become really comfortable using it;
  • Realize it’s too much work.

Either way, it’s a good idea to check in.

If they’re taking good care of the website and using it to promote their business, that’s great. This email will simply serve as a reminder that you remain their trusted ally and you’re here if they ever need anything.

And if they’re not taking care of it, this is an excellent opportunity to offer your assistance in providing (paid) support and maintenance.

Bringing Projects to a Close with an Offboarding Process

If you’ve done a good job of setting expectations with your client from the start, bringing a project to a close should be no problem.

Then again, you know how clients can get. They’re so excited to actually have a website now that they can’t stop imagining the possibilities. So long as you’ve delivered what they paid for, though, you are under no obligation to keep this project open to entertain those ideas unless they start a new contract with you.

Use this offboarding checklist to ensure you give each of your web design projects as strong and final a close as possible.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2019/04/5-steps-for-successfully-offboarding-web-design-projects/

Monday 22 April 2019

20 Freshest Web Designs, April 2019

Welcome to our roundup of the best new sites to be launched (or relaunched with significant updates) in the last four weeks.

After last month’s flirtation with monochrome, this month’s set of sites return to the overriding trend of 2019: color. Huge images are still popular, and parallax is still finding its way into our scrolling experiences. Enjoy!

Middle Fork Rapid Transit

Middle Fork Rapid Transit is an adventure vacation company that transports you over 100 miles down the Middle Fork river in Idaho. Its site packs in as much as one of its trips, and there’s tons of little details to get you fired up; I love the animated raft, and the grub looks amazing.

To Taste

To Taste is my favorite recipe site of the moment. Packed with food ideas for every occasion and palette, the simple site is laid out perfectly for browsing, and choosing something to make is a culinary treat. What really makes it, as with all food sites, is the mouth-watering photography.

The Face

Style bible The Face returned from oblivion this month, with a new team behind the iconic publication. Its site opens as daringly as you’d expect, before slowing to a more traditional, and more usable blog format.

Kia ProCeed

The site for the new Kia ProCeed is precisely the type of site we used to build back in the day. With interactive video, a unique navigation system based on established design patterns, and carefully designed usability, it’s an enticing experience.

Hiraeth

Co-founded by Rooney Mara, Hiraeth is a fashion label that produces desirable clothes free from any animal product. Its elegant site exudes quality with generous white space, and an almost Scandinavian minimalism, matching the garments perfectly.

Future of Sustainability

According to some estimates, we have just 12 years until we face not just climate change, but climate breakdown. Future of Sustainability wants to inspire you to change the 2020s, before it’s too late. It communicates a complex, and difficult message engagingly.

Nicholas Jackson

Nicholas Jackson is a New York based designer and art director. His portfolio site is a bold, confident expression of the work he loves to do for clients including Canon, The Wall Street Journal, The NY times, and Siemens.

Mansi

Mansi makes some of the best pasta this side of Naples, and it has an equally delicious website. Dotted throughout the site are pasta shapes, some of them animated, making Mansi’s site the most appropriate exponent of the blob trend I’ve seen to date.

Azab

Azab is an architecture firm with a love of mouse trails. Despite most designers abandoning them more than a decade ago, Azab’s site is built entirely around the path of your mouse on the screen. It’s surprisingly compelling.

Corpus

Corpus is an all-natural, all-vegan company producing deodorants that don’t harm you, or the planet. Its site intriguingly turns a standard e-commerce layout on its head, by presenting products up front, and the traditional hero video, down below.

Calidad Beer

Calidad Beer is a Mexican-style beer, brewed in California. With Levis-worthy art direction, and brand appropriate animation, its site is ideal for an unknown company trying to tap into a saturated market. Constantly reinforced, the brand identity is key here.

DEMO

The Design in Motion Festival, or DEMO for short, takes place in Amsterdam in November, when 80 screens in the central train station will showcase the best motion design work. The site itself features beautiful interactive lettering that Saul Bass would be proud of.

Camille Pawlak

The online portfolio of Camille Pawlak is based around a beautiful central animation that rotates as it transforms into the next project. It’s a simple, but elegant way to navigate between projects, and the work that she’s showcasing is excellent too.

Green Chameleon

Green Chameleon’s site is only temporary, with a full website redesign on the horizon. But with a portfolio like this, packed with parallax effects, and dead simple navigation, I think the Bristol agency should stick with what it’s got.

Flwr

Flwr is a New Zealand based florist with a modern approach. Its site uses text to mask its beautiful photography, creating an intriguing and inviting mini-site. It even embraces the split-screen trend to great effect.

Daly

Daly is a PR agency founded by Alex Daly, from her contacts built helping some of the world’s most successful crowdfund campaigns reach their targets. Its site is bold, colorful, and fun. The period after its name isn’t new, but I love the way it follows you down the page as you scroll.

Pacto Navio

When the finest Cuban rum is introduced to French wine making traditions, you get Pacto Navio. The rum, distilled near Havana, is served by a beautifully art directed site, featuring brand illustrations, and a distinctly Caribbean feeling.

Cheval Blanc

The French have a reputation for refined hospitality, and that trend is reflected in their love of sophisticated web sites. The site for Cheval Blanc is no exception, with a just-right level of parallax scrolling and refined typography.

Staat

Staat is a design agency specializing in event design for some of the world’s best known names. Its site features video case studies of its work, and the site itself takes a step backwards and allows the portfolio to shine.

Festa da Francofonia 2019

The 2019 festival for Francophones, is a festival celebrating the 220 million people worldwide who speak the French language. Celebrated from Morocco to Canada, the event’s site is a colorful, international feeling affair, appropriate for a multi-cultural event.

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from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2019/04/20-freshest-web-designs-april-2019/

Sunday 21 April 2019

Popular Design News of the Week: April 15, 2019 – April 21, 2019

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. 

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.

Site Design: Takahisa Mitsumori

 

Front-end Developer Handbook 2019

 

Death by PowerPoint: The Slide that Killed Seven People

 

UX Agenda – UX Conferences, Meetups and Workshops in One Space

 

Netflix Rejected all these A/B Tested Homepage Variations

 

Long-form Websites and Typography

 

Why the US Government Just Made its own Font

 

New Logo for Ontario

 

Top Font Combinations

 

Keyboard Stickers

 

The Power of Emotions in Illustration

 

Rethinking Government Contracts – a UX Case Study

 

The 10 Usability Heuristics – Free Posters for your Design Office

 

Neue Haas Grotesk, the Other New ‘Helvetica’

 

The Current State of Progressive Web Apps

 

Gathering Insights in Google Analytics Can Be as Easy as A-B-C

 

The Psychology of Pricing

 

Insights from Designing One Graph a Hundred Times

 

Ways to Add Perspective in Design

 

Helvetica Now

 

A Tool Designers Can Borrow from Writers

 

What Should Designers Ship?

 

Totally Incomplete and Utterly Unfinished List of Non White Male Designers to Follow and Listen To.

 

Managing Complexity

 

Information Architecture: Building Bridges

 

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Source

from Webdesigner Depot https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2019/04/popular-design-news-of-the-week-april-15-2019-april-21-2019/