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How to Prepare for Your VIP Day Website Project
Preparing for your VIP Day website project is crucial to ensure a smooth and successful collaboration with your web designer, and to ensure your project gets completed in your 8-hour timeframe as originally planned and intended. Here are some tips to help you prepare for your VIP Day:
Define Your Goals
Before we get started on your project, it's important to define your website goals. What is the purpose of your website? Who is your target audience? What actions do you want your visitors to take on your website? Are we going to be adding an online store to your site? Are we going to be creating blog content? What pages do we absolutely need to make sure we have included if nothing else?
Having a clear understanding of your goals will help me as your web designer create a website that meets your specific needs, and will help me execute that plan in a timely manner. A big mistake I see from a lot of VIP Day clients is that they're so excited and determined to get started with their project that we get it on the schedule, and have an okay idea of what we're going to accomplish, but when the VIP Day is almost here, they realize they don't have anything prepared.
Gather Inspiration
Look for websites that inspire you and gather examples of designs, colors, features, and layouts that you like and feel resonate with your business/brand. This will help me as your web designer understand your aesthetic preferences, establish a strong creative direction for the project, and create a website that reflects your brand in the best way possible.
If you don't provide me, or whatever web designer you go with, with any kind of insight into what aesthetic elements you're looking for, or any inspiration, it'll be much harder, and almost impossible to create something that you're totally head over heels for, that will also resonate with your target audience.
Gather the Content
Create content: Content is a critical part of your website. Take the time to create the content you want to feature on your website, including text, images, and videos. This will help me best understand the scope of your project and ensure that all the necessary content is included throughout your site. Below is a list of what I typically request from you prior to our VIP Day website project day:
All high-quality images you'd like to include on your site
Your company story and mission— don't be afraid of giving me too much information. The more information you can provide me, the better! I can always break it down and add less where needed, but it's much more difficult, and less effective if you don't give me anything but a few sentences to go off of. It is a lot more work to expound on little info.
If you're a service provider, I'll need a list of your services, descriptions of each or what's included, your pricing or starting-at prices if you want to include those on your site, and if you're a product-based business owner, I need a list of all your products, their variations, descriptions of each, pricing, and images to go with all the products and variations
Contact information to not only include on the contact page, but I need an email address that we'll use to create your Wix or Squarespace account!
What questions you'd like to include on your contact page form, or the embed link to your contact page that you use through your CRM software such as Dubsado or Honeybook.
If you're a product-based business, it's crucial to cover your butt and include Terms of Purchase for Digital Goods, Terms of Purchase for Physical Products, your Shipping Policy, Refund Policy, etc. You can purchase a Digital Products Bundle from The Boutique Lawyer and save, using the code THRIVE10 for an additional 10% off. Check out her site, she has everything you might need!
All websites, regardless of whether you're product or service-based, need a Privacy Policy statement, and Terms of Use statement on their site, and my best recommendation if you don't want to hire a lawyer for that, is to purchase a Website Protection Bundle pack of templates for these two things, as well as the other terms and agreements I mentioned above, from The Boutique Lawyer. You can get 10% off your purchase using the code THRIVE10, and you can browse around for any other legal docs and templates you might need in your business as well!
Organize Your Content
Make sure all your files are organized and easily accessible. This includes your logo, brand colors, images, and any other brand assets you want to include on your website to help keep your site cohesive and on-brand. I can't express to you enough, how much easier and quicker it is to design a website in a day when all the files are ready to go and in one place for me to pick from!
The last thing you want is to be missing certain elements we need for your VIP Day, and then we aren't able to complete your website to the best of our ability, or as great as it could've been because you didn't have your content ready in enough time. This is also important to think about when it comes to scheduling your VIP Day.
While the VIP Day itself goes by fairly quickly, it can take some time for you to gather all your content and materials. I've had clients who originally scheduled their VIP Day a week or so out, thinking they would be able to gather all their website content in plenty of time, only to find out that it was going to take a little longer than they realized, and then we have to push their project date back.
Set Expectations
We'll communicate our expectations for the project long before the project starts. We'll make sure we both have a clear understanding of the project timeline, what I'll need from you, all the final deliverables, payment terms, and communication channels, and make sure that all your questions have been answered. We want to make sure your VIP Day is a total success and that you're over the moon with your final website!
By following these tips, you can prepare for your VIP Day website project and ensure a successful collaboration with us at Thrive Design Co! We're looking forward to working on your project together!