The mantra ‘know your customer’ cannot be stressed enough, but demanding too much information too soon is fast becoming a taboo.

Short-term Strategies

Many company strategies for collecting customer information are based on a short-term plan, with the aim of capturing customer data as quickly as possible. This is often conducted with the best intentions, eager to know who their customers are so they can serve them better. However, this strategy can have a very negative impact on your customer’s perception of your business, as the data collection process does not necessarily appear to benefit them in performing the task at hand, which is quite often purchasing, registering or making contact. When this data collection is made mandatory within one of these processes, it will also generates a higher percentage of false or null data.

Take it slowly

Patient and passive data collation is key to generating accurate customer information and avoids undermining your relationship with them. A long-term strategy to develop valuable CRM data should be established, but also planned for. The data has more value due to its credibility but takes many years to collect. A combination of incentivised short-term strategies, where the customer can see an immediate gain to providing information and a long-term strategy should be adopted.

As I find time, I will build upon this for a more in depth article.

Other Data Capture Uses

Capturing and analysing staff behavior patterns and activity on the Content Managed System (CMS) can be very beneficial. Content Managed Systems can simply be deployed and forgotten. Analysing staff behaviour and evolving the CMS to speed up common tasks can save manhours and money. Further to this, companies with heavy internet traffic at peak times can cause poor system performance, leading to frustration when trying to perform essential administrative tasks. Knowing when data intensive tasks are performed and by who enables you to minimise these disruptions.

I have been involved in many, many Internet pitches with budgets ranging from £3k to £2m. Not one of these was a ‘paid for’ pitch. This means that agencies pitch for your work for free, sapping resources and draining their reserves to win your business. Only one (usually) wins, leaving the rest to lick their wounds and suffer the cost. A clear briefing document gives agencies a chance to get to the sharp end of the pitch, saving them (and you) valuable time and money when competing for your business, which gives you better comparable data and therefore a more informed choice.

This guide is quite extensive, and most of the content will not necessarily be relevant to everyone.

Introduction
The pitching process is an opportunity for agencies to compete on a level field using their talents and skills to deliver a solution that they believe will be superior to the other submissions.  In essence, this is the clearest and most controlled method for an agency to benchmark their offering against the competition. From an agency perspective, the pitch process is intense, condensing all their experience and techniques into a single submission in order to prove they are the best all-round choice for the project.

For a company looking to get the most out of this hungry gaggle of agencies, it is important to create the right attitude from the start. Whilst design agencies are not known for their science, Newton’s Third Law stating that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction does apply quite nicely when trying to get the most out of a pitch process. By creating a detailed, analytical and clear pitch document, you would in return receive a detailed, analytical and clear response. Create something light and woolly and you will find it difficult to differentiate between the competition.

This article should help you generate a detailed, analytical and clear pitch document to ensure you can differentiate between each of the agencies you involve.

Website objectives
Define and record your objectives for the finished website, what you want the website to do.
It is important to recognise the opportunity to get more from your online business, by way of increasing sales and improving the customer experience and convey the brand to its greatest potential online. Focus on what the web (sales) growth targets are for the next financial year and which areas in your business that will come from.
Other key objectives that you may want explaining are as follows:

• Translating brand values online
• Increase web market share
• Increase new, high value customers
• Improve conversion rate
• Increase average transaction value
• Increase share of wallet and purchase frequency
• Create a best-in-class website
• Relationship-building tool
• Maintain high quality and stability
• Deliver exemplary levels of service
• User focus objectives

Every aspect of your website and your brief should be orientated around these objectives. Use this section to give a design agency an insight into the type of website you need and its goals.

Budgets
Set a realistic budget (or budget range). If you don’t know what your budget is, how do you know you can afford to do the project? Setting a budget not only allows the agencies to know what level to pitch at, but can also let them know whether they should be pitching at all. If you don’t know how much your project will cost, using agencies to determine this is unfair on the agencies and will damage your reputation if you can’t afford to go ahead with the project. If possible, determine how much you can afford, set aside a contingency fund and provide this as a guide. You’ll be surprised at how attitudes to a project can change once an agency knows your budget.

Also be aware that some elements in the website will cost more to create and maintain. Ask your design agency to provide a breakdown of costs explaining how they are structured as one small feature could constitute an unreasonable amount of the bill. Be aware of any ongoing or licensing costs, or the cost of buying new software.
If possible, try to keep some money for ongoing development. Allow an element for things like accessibility and usability testing, as well as training someone in your organisation to keep the content updated, if necessary.

Resources
Be aware that without the right internal resources, a very well constructed, functional website can fail through lack of support. Make sure the agency is aware of your resources and that the solution they propose will work with the resources and structure you have available.

Building information
Who you are and what you do

• Explain your existing or proposed strategies and how the agency will assist in this
• Clarify how your organization operates, your departments, their roles and procedures and how the agency should integrate into this structure
• Define your audience, what motivates them and how the agency can build upon this

Your brand and design
Brand strength is a very visible (and valuable) company asset. It is therefore important to know from your pitching agencies:

• How they would nurture and protect the Company brand
• How this could be translated into a successful website/e-commerce solution
• How they would build on this in the designs and ideas they have
• How they could benchmark the designs against your audience

Your customers
It is essential that your agency can understand how to respond to your specific audience and deliver a positive result. Questions that can be asked here are: How would they prove their designs are successful, how would they illustrate a positive emotive response that would generate more visits, increase brand loyalty or improve transactions? How can they integrate their ideas into an existing (successful) business model and ensure there is harmony between old and new?

Your competitors
Find and list your competitor’s websites, and how yours should position against theirs. A design agency should also provide this as part of their research, but you should give them a head start (and you should already know who your competitors are). Try search engines, press, online directories, Yellow pages and anything else relevant to your field. Record the strengths and weaknesses of others, and where possible determine how successful they are.

Website review (if available)
Review key content and highlight what aspects of your current website are successful and why. Provide as much information as you can so that the agencies involved can build an understanding of your current successes and whether that fits their existing models within your sector sector. Make full use of any investment you have already made in your website (site statistics) and allow the agencies to reflect and react to this information.

Sales figures and statistics
For e-commerce, where possible, outline key sales figures and statistics for the current website over the last 12 months. This shows transparency and trust and provides real data for agencies to apply real business sense to their proposal.
These should include where possible; visits, sales, orders, Average Transaction Value (ATV), conversion, page views, average page visits, average time on the website, bounce rate as new visits.

Technical goals
The following information provides a guide as to what technical goals might be addressed:

Accessibility
The initial ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to accessibility has now matured in as much as a well coded site and clearly defined architecture will no longer exclude any specific audience from accessing your website content. Graceful degradation should be built into all website solutions and strategies to enable users to access your site content successfully. About two million people in the UK have significant sight loss (derived from a literature review carried out for RNIB in 2005 - see footnotes for a link), and the UK and US now include accessibility in its legislation. By including these two million customers and providing them with the best experience possible is obviously important to building any successful business strategy. WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines provide best practice methods to ensuring standards are followed. UK compliance follows one of three levels:

1. A – ‘must’
2. AA – ’should’
3. AAA – ‘may’

Level A is widely considered the minimum for compliance. AA and AAA are progressively more difficult to support and hence there is often a trade-off between compliance and cost. For the corporate AA is usually best practice, with smaller websites better suited to A - AA. Public sector generally follows AAA rating (though sometimes settles for AA).
A key element of this section would require a clear statement from your agency that the contract will not be completed until the website is thoroughly checked and verified for the level of accessibility compliance you require.

Usability
Agencies should be anticipating different types of customers and their needs / journeys, reducing barriers, dead ends and allowing them to move through your site in a way they are comfortable with. A customer should never need to think about what they should be doing next on a website. The best interfaces are invisible, requiring little or no thought by the customer as to what to do next. Information architects, designers and programmers need to collaborate to create effective, adaptable solutions. An agency should be able to demonstrate how they can do this.

Content Management Systems (CMS)
The success of a CMS lies in the ability of the architects, designers and programmers to understand and cater for most, if not all actions that will be performed by the user, mainly being you and your staff. As an administrator you are the most under researched of all user groups, yet you dedicate the most time to the site, through administration and maintenance. Quite often training is required before you can operate the system, which is strange considering it is something your highly valued customers don’t get when they will use your site. Are these systems not naturally intuitive?

Reducing the time taken to perform a task saves you money and improves productivity and overall efficiency. Investment in the information architecture of the CMS, user journeys, staff feedback and internal forums or focus groups is paramount to developing an effective, flexible, efficient CMS. Find out how an agency can handles content management and request an example or demonstration.

Personalisation and audience segmentation
All customers are unique with their own attitudes, interpretations and habits. A good website experience will provide flexibility and adaptability in the way the site information can be accessed and displayed. Multiple customer journeys are usually developed that can adapt to multiple behavior patterns and help customers achieve what they are trying to do more quickly. The way to get a customer to return to the site or to get a new customer to make their first purchase is to give them a great customer experience. A large part of this is to personalise their journey throughout the time they are on the site. For existing customers who have already purchased on the site you will know a lot more about what they expect and can provide them with rich content personalisation, which assists in the improvement of their experience on the site.

Site architecture and wireframes
Effective information architecture enables people to step logically through a journey confident they are getting closer to the information they require. Most people only notice information architecture when it is poor and stops them from finding the information they require. From the information architecture process, the sitemap and the wireframes are created. A sitemap is a page which contains an organised listing of links to all pages within the website. Having a  well-structured sitemap will help a search engine spider and index the pages. Wireframes are an online, interactive version of the content storyboard. A wire frame site has all of the links present to provide a way to evaluate the information architecture. It’s a great way to review and evaluate the organization, and the nomenclature that has been developed for a site. The user interface design has not been overlaid in a wire frame site.

Functional specification
The functional specification is a formal document used to describe in detail a website’s intended capabilities, appearance, and interactions with users. The functional specification is a guide and continuing reference point while the website is built.

Typically, the functional specification for a website would show the user interface structure (not design look) and describe each of the possible user input actions and the program response actions. A functional specification may also contain formal descriptions of user tasks, dependencies on other products, and usability criteria.
A functional specification is normally created out of the information architecture phase of a website project with the wireframes and site plan.

This is a crucial part of the project because if this is not completed properly then a full agreement between you and the agency about how the site is to be built and operate cannot be accurately documented.

Project planning
Project plan & critical path
What ultimately determines the length of your project? The answer is the critical path, the series of tasks that must be completed on schedule for a project to finish on schedule. Each task on the critical path is a critical task, which is the series of tasks (or even a single task) that dictates the calculated finish date of the project in the Project path and the resources assigned to them will help ensure that your project finishes on time. This may not apply to some projects, but where multiple resources and elements need to work together, it is essential.

Testing
During and after the build of a website it is important that the interface and fuctionality are tested thoroughly to ensure a fully operational, compliant site goes live. The testing that an agency should undertake would cover the following:

• HTML for validity
• CSS for validity
• Variable font size changes in the browser
• Site for accessibility to the level specified
• Cross browser compliancy – will it work on the specified browsers? (Internet Explorer 6, 7 & 8, Firefox, Opera, Safari check here for current share)
• The printing of web pages means that the printed output is legible and in keeping with the design of the site
• Site degrades gracefully when Javascript (AJAX/Jquery etc) turned off in the browser

In addition to this if the website is to have a content management system then the back end code and database need to be fully tested as part of the software build process.

Hosting
Design agencies should provide advice on choosing the right web hosting company for you. Try to avoid letting the agency host the site themselves or manage this through their account. This may make exiting the agreement further down the line much more complicated. If you want an agency to handle this on your behalf, ensure that the account is set up in your company name and is independent from the agency. They will need administrator access, but ultimately you need control of this.

Price and disk space aren’t the only factors to consider when choosing a host. Monthly transfer is how much information can be moved by both visitors and you; this may be from uploading and downloading files. Monthly transfer is also know as bandwidth and is slowly eaten up by every visit. I have seen many hosts offering more space than transfer! Don’t get caught out.

If you’re planning to install a forum or a content management system, they will both require a database. Linux and windows based hosts both handle MySQL databases, but Linux is usually praised as being the more efficient. Your host should allow you to add an extra database to your account with only a small fee, but you need to find out how many are included and how much upgrades cost before you decide on whom to hand your money too.

Website marketing: How would the new website be promoted?
Increasing visibility through search engines, emails, in store advertising, partner websites, affiliates, shopping directories and word of mouth should all be outlined in any agency’s marketing and web strategy, if it’s required and should outline how their involvement could be integrated into your current Marketing and PR strategies.

Optimised for search engines
Good natural search listings save money, and can generate some or most of your site traffic. Surprisingly a lot of agencies still don’t realise that by creating semantically correct and clean code, a lot of the job will be done for you. Well-structured code and the right balance in titling and keyword density will prove a wise investment. A good agency will work with you to customize your content specifically to improve search engine rankings. The trick is not to let changes to content affect the tone of voice, or how you talk to your audience, which is an important factor in maintaining your brand.

Pay-per-click (PPC)
PPC is a popular advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser’s website. Advertisers bid on keywords they predict their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser’s keyword list, or views a page with relevant content, the advertiser’s ad may be shown. These ads are called a ‘Sponsored link’ or ‘sponsored ads’ and appear next to or above the ‘natural’ or organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a webmaster/blogger chooses on a content page. This form of online marketing can be very expensive and the correct advice should be taken before using it.

The best approach is to establish your budget and then stick to it to avoid large overspending on PPC. PPC can be used very effectively over shorter timescales, for example, during a campaign. Try to avoid PPC that simply sends the visitor to your homepage. If you are intending to launch an e-commerce site, ensure PPC goes directly to the product page to reduce barriers to conversion.

Website analytics

Web analytics is the study of the behaviour of website visitors. In a commercial context, web analytics refers to the use of data collected from a website to determine which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase.

Other considerations
Soft or hard launch
A website should be implemented in stages rather than all at once. A soft launch is then followed with a hard launch and promotional campaign taking place after the system has bedded in. The site should be constantly monitored for stability to ensure no problems occur.

Ongoing support and maintenance
Over the life of a website, the maintenance can often be the most expensive and most overlooked aspect. It is important your design agency that can offer this support for ongoing marketing requirements. These usually fall into the following categories:
Support and maintenance to assist with minor website updates and bug fixing
Website development to assist with the continuous development and enhancement of the website
Campaign management to assist with creation of campaign assets
Website hosting and admin to manage your hosting requirements and lead technical contact

These ongoing requirement can fall into the following maintenance options:

Support contract or retainer
You pay a fixed amount each month for entitlement to manual changes. Has the advantage of fixed costs, and requires less internal commitment than Content Management. However having a content management system allows you to make immediate changes whereas having the online partner make them could take longer.

Pay-per-change
You pay for individual changes, usually by the hour. This option can be the cheapest if your website only requires a very small number of changes during it’s life. Usually a website is not very effective unless it is kept up to date, and this option has the negative effect of encouraging this.

Footnotes
The prevalence of sight problems in the UK - RNIB study 2005

Unfortunately, due to a technical error, the previous blog has been lost forever. Our apologies for this. Fortunately, most of the articles were stored elsewhere, so we should be able to get these back up onto the system soon. For anyone looking for a previous blog entry via history or bookmarks, please take a minute to look around as they may well be here, just not where you previousy found them.

Building and maintaining a solid and trusting relationship with your design agency is key to ensuring your project’s success. Relationships with design agencies quite often fail because clients see them as suppliers instead of partners and in treating them as such, will reduce the value an agency will add at a time when their solutions are most needed.

Some clients will learn this lesson the hard way, becoming battle worn and jaded, constantly struggling with their design agency and never letting them realise their true potential. However, others will recognise there is an alternative to this process and whilst these 12 golden rules are only based on our past experiences, applying them could help build a great partnership between you and your agency, which in turn will deliver better results.

How do you get the best from your design agency…

1. Show mutual respect

Treat your agency like an equal partner and value their perspective. Quite often clients are so involved in their business and the project in hand that it is difficult for them to see how this may be perceived from a customers point of view. Work as a collective; it will make everyone’s life more pleasant. Similar to any long-term relationship, it takes a lot of hard work and clear communication to build a strong relationship.

2. Define your goals

Brief the agency with backing of the key players (core team) from all companies involved. Hopefully, this meeting takes place in the same room but can also happen over the telephone. Start with a communications/design brief and make sure that everyone agrees with the objectives for the project. Agencies have digested and created many more design briefs than you might have, so at this meeting, welcome contributions that would help further define this and be open to constructive criticism from all members.

It is important to note that smaller projects may seem like they don’t need this type of communication. These are usually the projects that derail because not as much thought is put into the project at the start and the team has not agreed about direction. A quick meeting and written confirmation can quickly solve this issue.

3. Define your teams, roles and responsibilities

There’s nothing worse than everyone in the room being in agreement, all fired up and ready to go, only to be told the Chairman wasn’t involved and has now changed his mind. Establish a chain of command and ensure all external influences are either accounted for or contained right from the start. Most friction in projects is caused by external forces rocking the boat. If this is unavoidable (as it often is) make this clear from the beginning and ensure all external influences that are not directly involved in the project are either kept in the loop or kept at arms length.

4. Set the limits

Set the brand and creative parameters up front. Does this project need to fit within strict guidelines, or is this an opportunity for the agency to explore creatively? Make sure everyone on your team agrees with your direction, and clarify the parameters. If aspects of a project are challenged that fall into another agency’s area of responsibility, seek their advice or make them aware, otherwise you are breaking rule number 1 in that relationship.

5. Define the background details

Always give the agency as much background detail as possible on the project and business, and clearly define what you are trying to accomplish. It is very helpful for the agency team to understand the thought process behind the project. It will also give them the opportunity to ask questions, make sure they understand the scope of the work, and clarify the timeline and budget range.

6. Give a budget range; it saves time

Share the budget information with the agency when you can. If the agency knows the project is set for £10-£20K rather than £60-£80K, it will make a huge difference in what they propose to you. There’s little point in creating an £80K concept if you could never be able to afford. Some clients have the opinion that knowing a budget reduces creativity. This is simply not that case and any good design agency will tell you that knowing your limits sets it’s own challenge. N.B. This applies to pitches too. Budgets level the playing field and

7. If your budget is tight, listen to the options

We’re all intent on delivering the best possible project and through experience know how to achieve the biggest bang for your budget. If you have a low budget, discuss this openly with the agency to see how they can maximise your investment. Tread with care when dealing with a new, untested agency, but if they have integrity, they will help you spend wisely.

If the agency is unaware of the budget and their proposal exceeds your funds, always give the agency a chance to rework the proposal, otherwise it was wasted time for both businesses. Further to this, if the proposal does exceed your allotted budget, but it is exactly what you were after, talk to them to see if this can be developed into stages and rolled out when budgets can be found.

8. Develop dialogues, not monologues

It is important to put the effort in right from the start to establish a collaborative relationship where you solve challenges together. Ensure there is open discourse between team members and when necessary, help the agency negotiate any tricky politics that may arise.

Support your agency when problems arise, and be available to help resolve issues or conflicts. This will build a strong relationship with the agency team and they will be more willing to bend over backwards to help you even within an impossible timeframe.

9. Focus on the positive; it will pay off

When performing a critique, include all the key decision makers. Always start with positive feedback or praise, even if you have to work to come up with something constructive. It sets the tone for the meeting, and it is much easier for people to handle constructive criticism if they feel something positive has come out of it. Before offering constructive criticism, ask why a design team has decided to take one creative direction over another. There may be a very good reason and may provide insight that you had not considered.

If work presented is totally off brand, consider the reaction carefully. It is not always the fault of the agency. It may have lost direction due to client demands or simply the agency was more keen to impress than stick rigidly to the guidelines. There will always be those on both sides who can forget or overlook the importance of consistent branding. Simply return to rules 1 & 2 and get the project back on track.

When giving creative feedback via email, follow up immediately with a telephone discussion. It is easy to misinterpret written instruction and you lose the value that the supporting discussion can add.

10. Problem-solve collectively

It is critical to collaborate with your agency team when problem solving. If there are issues, you need to raise these and work them through as a team. Don’t try to determine your own solution without the agency’s input, and don’t decide that the only solution is to never use them again. You will invest a great deal of energy starting over again with another agency, and there is no guarantee this process won’t be repeated. Before taking this option, consider why you chose this agency in the first place, after all they were probably the best candidate for the job. Getting them to understand your company’s brand and how to work with your team can take a great many months and mistakes can happen. By working through the issues and learning from the mistakes, stronger solutions and better relationships can develop.

11. Regularly conduct project debriefs

After each project, a review can be extremely useful. It helps to identify issues and highlight mistakes that should not be repeated. A review gives the team an opportunity to discuss what went well, what didn’t go so well and areas for improvement on both sides. A good review will create opportunities for making changes on both sides that will build upon your existing working relationship.

12.Celebrate successes together

A note to the whole team saying how much you appreciate their hard work goes a long way. If budget a geography allow, an event which includes all the team, including those you don’t encounter on a day-to-day basis has an incredible positive effect and creates a strong sense of teamwork.

The circles we move in are often smaller than we think. You can bump into the same people at different times in your career. Sometimes, you spend more time on a daily basis with your agency partners than with your own family an by building strong relationships, you will accomplish excellent results and potentially build some good friendships that will stay strong throughout your career.

Many thanks to all those who contributed to this.