Head in the Clouds & Shooting for the Moon!

At some point in your self-employed life you will find yourself filled to the brim with ideas about just how your business is going to be the one.

The one that:

• Fixes a major life problem,
• Keeps you financially sound for life,
• Releases the next big thing,
• Hits the headlines for its brilliance…

And why not! Business is built on dreams, we all have them, a few of you are prepared to reach out and grab them making them real.

Business is also built on expertise. When I was sat trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my working life, I had a list of options a mile long: baker (I trained in my 20’s), seamstress (I love to sew), author (I have a few books in me), developer (I love to design and build), lottery winner… well we can all hope.

I decided on developer, I truly love what I do and I’m pretty damned good at it if I do say so myself.

The joy of my work gets to be in taking my clients ideas and pulling them together into something beautiful and functional. I am yet to meet a client who wasn’t overflowing with ideas, potential content, and expertise in their field.

I am also yet to meet a client who could put together a website that reflected this. Don’t get me wrong there have been some good sites in this list, some nicely put together pictures and well worded articles, but nothing that truly reflected their awesomeness!

And that’s where your developer comes in. We take your ideas, your content, and your awesomeness and in our lines of code we make them shine. Spacing, colour matching, correct grouping, and a proper site map. A little SEO expertise and a plan to go forward with keeping your site relevant and visited.

So what will you need before you speak with your developer:

• An idea
  Sounds simple doesn’t it, but it needs to be a fleshed-out idea, i.e. ‘I want to sell my photographs as digital images to graphic and web designers.’
• An aesthetic
  What are you all about design wise? The best directions I get are almost like those you’d expect an Interior Designer to receive – ‘I’m all about winter colours and I like to feel cosy and comforted.’ Or ‘I’m into greens and need things to be clean and ordered.’
• Your preferences
  So I have my own preferences for each type of site. E-commerce – WordPress, Portfolio – stand alone, Blog – Wix, etc…
  But if you love Shopify and will accept nothing less, then say out right and Shopify you will have! We will still have a conversation as to why and what you value from Shopify because I’m all about saving you some money at the end of the day.
• A budget
  We’re in the real world here so I won’t shy away from the fact that Web Design and Development isn’t cheap. You are paying for expertise, for months and years of study, experience, and personal development. We spend time searching the web for the newest trends, how to do them and what makes a site work. We spend a lot of money on our support packages, servers, partner portals, insurance, design suites. We spend more time than we ever bill you for playing with parts of your site because ‘it’s not your fault that we just can’t get it quite right!’.
• Time
  Last but not least. We need you to give up a little time to review drafts, provide your expert content, chat through new parts to make sure that your requirements are fulfilled.

Picking your developer.

So you have all of these things ready and waiting to go, so how do you pick your developer?

Well I can only give the perspective of my customers who are a mix of recommendations from other clients and those I’ve met through networking. They have sought out a personal connection, someone they feel comfortable talking to, that they have a little in common with and then in those conversations have left feeling that they trust me with their vision.

As a small business myself I give a very personal experience with access to me directly as the client needs. Yesterday I spent a number of hours chatting with a couple of clients as I worked about their planned content and how to break through mental blocks to writing, which the personal touch allows as I know them!

As I scale it is my absolute intention to maintain this, which I will do with an awesome team of VA’s and coders at my side, I don’t work with anyone who can’t do what I can in the respect of the task I am passing over. My VA Viv is as personable and professional as I am and I have turned away a number of potential developers because they can’t see beyond the code to the customer.

Pick based on your gut, oh and check their portfolio out too, there's no point in any of it if their work just doesn’t appeal!