Weekly Website Wednesday – Week #9

So, you’ve decided to let someone build your kennel website. In a previous post, I mentioned a few things you’ll need to get started—your kennel introduction (where you describe who you are and what your kennel does), your domain name selection, and gathering pictures and logos to help build out your site’s interface. It’s also a good idea to think about what you want your website to look like. Broadly speaking, you should be able to convey what you like and dislike about other sites, as well as what colors and styles appeal to you. The clearer you are about your preferences, the less back-and-forth you’ll have with your web designer.

Take some time to browse other kennel websites and make a list of the ones you like best, along with the specific features that appeal to you. Is it the colors, the graphics, the logo—or maybe the ease of navigation? Try to picture your site through the eyes of your potential customers, especially those who may not be very web-savvy. Would they be able to use that neat feature you found on someone else’s website?

You might say, “That’s what I hired a web developer for,” but the point of identifying sites that appeal to you isn’t to copy them. It’s to give your designer an understanding of your personal taste so your kennel website can be tailored to you. This makes your designer’s job easier and saves time, since they’ll have a clear direction from the start rather than going through multiple rounds of revisions.

In the end, you need to be able to share your vision—not just how you want your website to look, but also how you want it to function.