Any company looking to procure something entirely outside of its specialism – be it a new copier, getting a new office built, or a website – knows how it goes: “So which one of our copy machines do you want, the FU-13 model from the WTF series, or the JB-007 from the MI6 series?” How on Earth are we supposed to know that, right…?
With copiers, the story usually has a happy ending – the copier dealer knows the score and has trained sales-people who will take you through their catalogue and get you to answer all the right questions: how much do you usually copy; how often; one-sided or two-sided; are you likely to need 12 collated brochures copied in quick succession, or just print out a rota once a week… And then they will narrow the 300-strong strong catalogue down to three options most suited to your needs (and end up talking you into the most expensive one).
It’s not so simple, though, when it comes to a new office or website – because it can’t be. Rather than choosing one item out of 300, you are choosing 300 very specialized items out of three million variations. And if among the staff of your garden centre, rolling mill, or biochemical lab you would struggle to find an expert on copy machines, good luck finding an expert town planner slash architect slash interior designer all rolled into one. Let alone an expert on online marketing, UX design, visual design, accessibility, and ergonomics, not to mention web technologies.
You could just wing it and get your house built or website designed randomly – without either you or the contractor knowing why you are actually doing it, what you expect from it, what will be happening there, who, where, and with whom you should communicate and meet. By a stroke of luck, you might wind up with something more-or-less usable, but most likely with plenty of weak spots. You will have parted with a lot of money for something you are not quite happy with, and will spend even more on fixing and upgrading it.
Architects design houses, is that not obvious?
Alternatively, you can avoid all this by hiring an expert. With buildings, there is a set procedure – the expert in question is called the architect. She won’t build the house for you, but will extract information from you (including information you had no idea you had), then link this with the experience of similar companies around the world, and design a house for you that will allow your company to run smoothly, discreetly meet your needs, and grow with you side-by-side. The architect will give you a bunch of materials: in line with your specific situation, something between a general concept and a detailed technical blueprint. Either way, you will have a clear set of specifications that you can use to brief a contractor of your choice. No substantial inventing or designing will be left for the contractor to do, they will simply materialize the architect’s clearly predefined specifications.
With websites, it’s the same idea – unfortunately though, this idea remains woefully underused. The ‘website architect’ profession is relatively new, still in its infancy, still lacking a proper name. A better term not being available, I will simply include it under the heading of UX designer – but do keep in mind that this refers to this broader definition of design, not simply the creation of a website’s visual appearance. The role of a comprehensive UX designer of this sort is to bridge the gap between your (lack of) knowledge and that of a supplier capable of building your website. He, too, will gather all the important information regarding your business, the market, your target audience, your goals, objectives, ideas and possibilities, the needs and desires of your customers, and hundreds of other things, and recast all that into an architectural design and a more-or-less detailed specification that you can show to any company you have chosen to build your website, furnished with a pretty clear idea what you would be getting.
With a bit of luck and enough money you can find a supplier able to provide an all-inclusive service and do all this for you. Big agencies do this as a standard and have processes ready to take the client from the discovery process, through designing all the details, to the final build stage. Unfortunately, this is often a rather expensive solution, akin to hiring a large property developer providing turn-key solutions that encompass everything from the architect’s sketch to landscaping around the finished house. But even more importantly, only rarely will we find top architects in employment with property developers.
The best architects and designers work independently. If you want something genuinely unique, contract design and build separately – it is better when the architect and the builder are independent of one another.
Luckily, there are more and more (UX) design studios and independent “software architects” of this kind. They will not be offering to deliver a turnkey website; at best they may recommend a supplier they have had good experiences with. Their main deliverable is specifications. Specifications being an unpretentious word, but one that deserves more recognition and respect than it has been getting. It is certainly not just some vague list of wishes and feelings, but rather a thoroughly researched, thought out, and verified set of requirements, an architectural concept, or even a detailed blueprint of your future website, with which you can go to practically any supplier to get it built.
Anything between a concept and a detailed project description
Some architects will only prepare the general material concepts, communication channels, and key proportions of a building, without being overly concerned as to whether the house you build will be white or brown, made of bricks or wood; similarly, some designers can provide you with general specifications they consider important and defining, and will leave secondary parameters that do not affect the website’s function up to you or the company implementing it. And so website specifications need not include a colour scheme or specific visual style, but will still clearly define the website, setting in stone those features and parameters that will have real impact on its functionality. In another scenario, you might get a detailed design that includes the smallest graphic features, rules for copy-writing, or strict requirements for technical solutions. It is up to you which of these “architectural” approaches you select, neither is better or worse than the other.
At any rate, it is good to get used to the idea that just like you cannot design a good house on your own, or simply choose one from a catalogue to perfectly fulfil your needs, neither will a good and successful website just spring up out of the blue. And if you want your website to be good and really functional and profit-making, it pays to first turn to professionals who can help you put it together, to transform all requirements into clear and precise as can be specifications.
It is no coincidence that a whole category of this blog is dedicated to discussing what a designer must do in the specification preparation stage, and what good and complete website specifications must cover.
