It’s silly to deny there is an economic problem. I don’t think there is anybody saying that anymore, thankfully, because the only way to get on the right path to a solution is to recognize there is a problem. With rising costs, floundering banks, and general economic instability, businesses, small and large alike, are feeling the pinch. What’s a small business owner to do in tough times? How do you tighten the belt effectively to get through the current state of the global economy?

In the design business, the only costs which would probably be rising which would cause pressure to the small business owner, would be energy. Likely, the biggest financial challenge would be more along the lines of clients not wanting to spend money on design services, if you’re even lucky enough to be closing sales now at all. So, what to do?

Below are some of my own ideas of ways a company can cut costs and possibly boost sales, without hurting morale. Layoffs are not exactly a way to keep morale up, and productivity might increase, due to fear, but so would stress and possible burnout. Some might even jump ship, thinking things could be working out better elsewhere. Low morale might also decrease creativity, the only real commodity any design firm has. Morale’s important. We really want to preserve morale. Without further ado, the list:

1. Cut non-essential expenses, and replace them with other perks which cost less, or nothing. Bagel Friday, free snack room, soda, coffee, apparel, office supplies, etc. Maybe instead of the expensive coffee, buy the Sam’s Club large container of Folger’s. Buy less office supplies, or encourage employees to use less - print less, write less, etc. Yea, all those little things are appreciated, but those costs can really add up. What about keeping morale up? Read on…

2. 4-Day work week. This has been implemented in many businesses and government organizations in the past year or so with some very great results. Have 10-hour work days, and give Fridays off! There won’t be Bagel Friday, because there won’t be any more Fridays! This has been shown to boost productivity, and would also lower energy bills.

3. Free candy. Yea, I said get rid of unnecessary expenses. Candy, however is a great replacement, as it’s fun, and you can buy a $10 bag of assorted candies and it will last a while. Once every week or two is not a huge expense, and people would not feel as bad about not having their free sodas and snacks and fancy coffee.

4. Telecommuting. Allowing people to telecommute where possible would lower energy bills, again, and would allow people to be more comfortable working from home. With today’s communication services such as IM, email, video conferencing, phone, etc. there’s no real reason people can’t work from home, even on collaborative projects.

5. Job sharing. Allow people to work outside of their usual roles. If they’re not busy due to lower streams of work coming in, setting them to work in other areas might help out, such as (gasp!) sales, admin, or even janitorial work. If people think they might lose their job if the company can’t cut costs, and they’re not busy, they might be very open to running a vacuum cleaner around the office to not require the janitorial service coming in.

6. Pay cuts. Definitely a last resort, but it couldbe necessary. You as the business owner should set an example and let your employees know that you care about them. Take a pay cut and publicize it in your company that you are doing so to keep more people’s jobs.

7. Cut advertising. Unless you have some truly phenomenal returns on your advertising, it’s most likely not the best use of your money. The best advertising is generally free, in my opinion. See #8.

8. Talk to your clients. For the best return on your advertising dollar, go with the free options. Talk to your existing clients, and maybe offer them incentives such as free services for referring a new client. Ask them the name of a close vendor who might need your services. Every business deals with other businesses, and it shouldn’t be difficult to give you a few names. Follow the chain around.

9. Other free marketing tips. Email newsletters, press releases, blog posts, link exchanges with vendors and clients, cold calling, networking, etc. Think $0.

10. Talk to your clients. Again. Maybe there’s a way you can boost their sales. Offer them a new service which they might find beneficial.

11. Explore new services with existing assets. Try shopping it to existing clients or new ones. Given your current assets and the skillsets of your employees, is there something else you can offer with relatively little or no investment that might be a new source of revenue? Maybe adding adsense to sites? Or, if you’ve been strictly web, exploring regular graphic design services? Of, if you’ve been strictly graphic design, offering illustration services? Banner ads, etc. Just look at your capabilities and try to expand your offerings.

Anybody have any other tips they’d like to share?

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After someone had asked for help in building a website, and giving me a list of tasks she had to accomplish with the new website, I realized there are a millions of tutorials on how to write code - XHTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, PHP, ActionScript, ASP, ColdFusion, etc - tons of tutorials on all the favorite graphics and web editing programs, like Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, the works, but just not a whole lot of information on the other work involved in building a website.

Say you’ve been tasked with building a website. You might know some basic HTML already, and are probably a little handy with Photoshop, enough to make some basic graphics. But where do you begin? What do you do first? How do you get your website ranked high on the search engines? How do you know what style to make the website? What features are necessary and what should be left out?

This series of articles will aim to help out in clarifying the dizzying number of questions you need answered. When you are through with these articles you will know where to begin and how to tackle your design project so it gets completed on time, and on budget. Oh, and it should be a lot more successful, too!

Part 1: Planning

The first, and most important step in building a website is PLANNING. More important than a creative design, more important than standards-compliant coding, planning is the one thing that will let you start off on the right foot and ensure that the project is actually going in the correct direction. Rookie designers love to just jump right into Photoshop and start throwing layers and gradients around. But without proper planning, you might end up submitting design after design to the client and never getting approval. And in the end, the site could be a real flop.

So where do you start? Like any design project, not just web design, you should start with identifying your goals; what the website will actually do. Everything you do for the website will then be built around those goals. This will give you focus, and will help eliminate arbitrary design requests. Bottom-line is, if it’s not about accomplishing those specific goals, throw it out the window.

After you identify goals, start identifying important details. Here’s a list that may or may not be complete for your specific web site design project. Careful analysis and brainstorming will be required to determine what other questions you need answered.

1. What user group is being served?
2. If there are multiple user groups, does each experience need to be completely separate?
3. How will the user group affect technology/design?
4. Is one user group more important than another?
5. Are there branding guidelines?
6. Does this design project need to be unified with any other design projects?
7. Does the design need to be flexible?
8. Will the site have any technical requirements/constraints (shopping cart, CMS, etc.)?
9. How can we determine those requirements/constraints?
10. Is there web hosting?
11. What programming languages will the site be written in?
12. Will it be static or dynamic?
13. Will you be working with any other designers/vendors for photography/illustration/etc.?
14. Who’s constructing the sitemap/information architecture?
15. What’s the marketing plan?
16. Will the site need a high level of Search Engine Optimization?

This is a list I just pulled off the top of my head. Your project might have other issues which research might uncover. Getting started answering these questions will give you lots of infomation and will direct you in the right path to building your website.

Stay tuned for the next article!

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