Help Your Website Draw a Record Crowd

As well as writing articles for this website, and for my business partnership, Grassroots Internet Strategy, I also have a personal blog related to something I’m very passionate about; Grand Slam tennis.

Due to the Australian Open and the lead up events, January is a massive month for tennis in Australia, and hence a massive month for my blog.

In comparison with January 2011 (when my tennis blog was new), my web traffic increased by nearly 1800% (up from around 1000 visits in Jan 2011 to nearly 18,000 in Jan 2012). Here are some of the things that helped me draw a record crowd.

1. If web traffic is important, create a lot of content

I published 32 articles in January which includes articles I wrote as well as guest articles written by others, photos and videos from YouTube.

Some of the Search Engine Optimisation advantages of creating valuable content are:

• Each article you add to your website makes it bigger, which gives it more Google authority.
• Each article gives other website owners an opportunity to link to you.
• Each article can be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
• Each article gives your readers a reason to visit your website again.
• Each article includes keywords, which helps your website appear more often in search engine results.

I created a lot of content in a short space of time for an audience who reads as much as they can about the topic in that short space of time but it’s important to note that if your articles are sent to a subscriber list, make sure you meet their expectations in terms of how much content they expect to receive from you.

2. Connect to people who want to read and share your content

Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or wherever your target readers are located, connect to as many people as you can and get to know them. This increases the chance they will read your content and share it with their own network.

In the spirit of “do unto others as you wish they would do unto you”, it’s important that you share other people’s content, as well as your own.

And when someone does share your content, show your appreciation

3. Ask for input from the people you are connected to

You don’t need to create all your content yourself. Aside from sharing other people’s videos and guest articles on your blog, you can also create content by compiling other people’s input.

If someone is mentioned in your article, they are probably more likely to share it too

Here’s an example of an article where I compiled tennis fans predictions for what the outcome of the Quarter Finals would be.

4. Anticipate the information that people will search for and have it ready

This is particularly useful if you write articles about an event or activity that a lot of people will search Google for in a limited period of time. It could also work if there are significant changes happening in your industry that a lot of people will want to know about.

Step 1 in keyword research is to use the Google Keyword Tool to research the keywords that people search for. You can also look for clues in your Google Analytics. And, you can also use your own knowledge of your niche to anticipate what people will search for.

See which keywords from past articles have generated traffic from Google and use the information to create new articles focused on related keywords.

For example, I often write articles about the prize money that winners receive for a tennis tournament because I know from the past that on the day of the tournament final, and for a few days after the event, people search for that information.

Have the information published at least a week or two in advance, so that it can be indexed by Google in time for the anticipated searches.

5. Build links with other website owners who share your passion

There is a lot of link swapping amongst tennis bloggers. You’ll see the links to the “Tennis Blogs I Love” in the right hand column on my blog. These are all reciprocal links with blogs that I enjoy reading regularly. I get good referral traffic from these sidebar links where other bloggers have linked back to me.

Find out about new links to your website either from the referral traffic in your Google Analytics, or if you use WordPress you’ll get a notification in your comments (a pingback).  Similar to when people share your articles, when you notice new links to your website, show your appreciation

What other ways have worked for you in terms of dramatically increasing your web traffic?

Cheers

Melinda

• Website Development: How search engine friendly your website is
• Web Content: The quality of your content, the keywords that you use in your content and how you use them
• Inbound Links: The number and quality of links from other websites to your website.

In a lot of respects you rely on working with the right person to get the web development part right.

The content is the part that you have complete control over. You can either learn the basics of SEO Copywriting yourself (this article on The Minimalist Guide to Incredibly Effective SEO Copywriting is a great place to start) or work with a SEO Copywriter.

Once your website is set up and your copy is sorted, next you need to build inbound links. 

Why are inbound links important?

Having a lot of high quality links from other websites to your website shows search engines that your website is important.

In this interview, Matt Cutts from Google says

Google ranks sites based on popularity. If authoritative sites link to you, you must be good, and therefore you get to the top of the list.

Personally I also think that links count because they are hard to get, and if you put in time and energy to get them, you must be serious about your website being successful

When it comes to building links, how do you find the low hanging fruit?

The list below was inspired by a presentation by Jim Boykin of Internet Marketing Ninjas on Link Building Basics at the SMX Melbourne conference.

1. By asking

Ask your suppliers. Ask your business contacts. Ask the people that you know.

As long as they have a website (and particularly if they have a website that ranks well in search engines), ask if they will add a link to your website.

2. Through organisations and associations that you are a member of

Many organisations offer a member directory where you can list the details of your business plus a link to your website.

3. By searching online

Look for free directories that list local businesses. Google Places, True Local and Hot Frog are three good ones to start with.

Also check out your local council website. Many offer to list local businesses in an online directory.

4. By creating link bait

Link bait is high quality content that other website owners will be enticed to link to. Have a look at all the content you already have (particularly your offline content) and think about how you could use it, or re-purpose it, and share it on your website.

Here are some ideas for the type of content you can create:

• eBooks and whitepapers
• Videos
• Informative articles
• Interviews
• Case Studies
• Survey results
• Recorded webinars
• Slide presentations.

Attract links to your content by:

• Making sure the quality is high
• Offering something unique that your readers and target audience will find interesting enough to share
• Letting as many people as possible know your content exists by sharing it content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, article sharing sites and wherever else you can think of.

5. By seeking out guest blogging opportunities

Guest blogging involves writing articles for someone else’s blog.  As the author you can add your bio at the end of the article, along with a link to your website.

Build relationships with other bloggers in your niche via social media like Twitter and when the time is right, find out if they are interested in a guest blog from you.

Decide what your best options are and go for it

OK sure, so the first few suggestions might be hanging a bit lower than the final ones but I hope I’ve given you at least a few practical options that you can build into your online marketing plan.

Anything that you do to build links that involves adding new content to your website also helps to optimse it by:

• adding pages to your website (which makes it bigger and adds authority)
• adding more keywords
• giving search engines (and people) a reason to come back regularly.

Ideally, keywords should be used as the link text

Where possible, get people to use your keywords as the link text, rather than your your business name (if your business name is carefully chosen to include your keywords, then its win-win).

For example:

• In this article by Melinda of Click-Winning Content, who provides web copywriting services to small businesses.

Rather than:

• In this article by Melinda of Click-Winning Content.

And here’s my least favourite link text:

• Click here to read more in this article by Melinda of Click-Winning Content.

Until next time

Melinda

P.S. Are you ready to take your website marketing to the next level?

Join the Website Boot Camp and get practical advice about what makes a great website, web copywriting, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress.

We’re talking truly practical tips that you’ll be able to use straight away. It’s all held live and online and will also be recorded for your viewing pleasure.

I’ve  been doing a lot of web copy editing for clients lately. As part of my copy editing services, if the client has a Content Management System I generally also make the updates to the website once they’ve been approved.

Every time I add copy to a website, I take time to format it and make the layout look as good as possible.

Because it’s not just the words that impact how many people read your copy and how much of it they read; it’s also the look and style of the copy.

For example if the words are all the same size and colour, and if they are all scrunched up together, your web visitors aren’t going to be too inspired to keep reading, no matter how great your content is.

This is the copy from my home page, badly aligned and without the formatting:

How far did you get before you stopped reading? I can’t blame you if you didn’t even start!

Although I never question the fact that you need to provide quality words on your web pages, to make the most of your efforts, they should also be nicely designed words.

I’m fortunate to have some great web designers working on my current projects who take care to make sure the copy that’s added to the website looks as fabulous as the overall design.

Here are some copy related things that should be included as part of your web design:

Text Styles

• Heading 1

• Heading 2

• Heading 3

• Heading 4

• Heading 5

• Paragraph

Dot points

• Dot Point 1
• Dot Point 2
• Dot Point 3

Quotation boxes

Link Text that links to other pages of your website and also to other websites

These different styles of text can all have different font sizes, colours and level of boldness.

Obviously you don’t want to go too far in the other direction by having too much colour and variation. This can be distracting and makes your copy harder, rather than easier, to read.

Take a fresh look at your website.

Do the text styles, sizes and colours add value to your web copy and make it look fabulous?

Or do they bring down the fabulous design of your website header and the rest of your website, much like an ugly dress totally detracts from a fabulous hat?

Until next time

Melinda

P.S. Thanks to Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival for inspiring this article. I’m looking forward to seeing hats galore out and about in the city over the next week or so. And I’m hoping that they will be fabulous hats. Fabulous hats that aren’t bought down by ugly dresses… or shocker Barry Crocker fake tan!

To get great results from investing in Google AdWords your campaigns need to be well set up and optimised.

You can either learn to do this yourself or have your campaigns managed  by a Google Qualified Advertising Professional.  If you’re looking for tips to improve your AdWords results, in a recent article I covered 5 Common and Costly AdWords Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

But, campaign set up and management aside, the critical factor in getting value out of your AdWords spend is the quality of your website.

You can have the biggest advertising budget ever but if your website doesn’t cut it once people have clicked through on your ads, they will “bounce” away, effectively wasting the money that you spent on the click.

The page that your AdWords ads are directed to is called a Landing Page.

The best Landing Page isn’t always your Home Page.

You may find you’ll get much better results by directing your ads to a page that is focussed on the information that the searcher was looking for, and that is designed to encourage your web visitors to do exactly what you want them to do.

So how do you do that?

Start by getting advice from an expert!

Here are some tips from Chris Bates of Octoply, who specialises in creating websites that get results.

1.Specificity sells!

Send your AdWords traffic to a landing page that continues with the message from the ad. Keep it relevant, clean, & simple.

Add relevance by using the main keywords from your AdWords campaign prominently in the headline and the text.

2. Ask for the action

Whether it be buying a product online, submitting an enquiry or something else, plan what you want your web visitors to do and always prompt them towards this conversion with a Call to Action.

3. Remove distractions on your landing pages

Don’t give the visitor reasons to exit (remove navigation, external links, etc.)

4. Ensure that perceived value is greater than perceived cost.

Show the value by clearly stating the benefits that the product or service will bring.  Great benefits to emphasise are “save time” or “save money”

Use Testimonials & guarantees used to improve trust & credibility.

Check out an example of a landing page that follows these principles:

TKProofreading

Once you have your website or landing page ready to get some traffic via AdWords, make sure you have Google Analytics installed so that you can find out how well your landing page and website performs.

Want to find out if Google AdWords is an effective way to get more sales or enquiries from your website?

Give the $279 No Risk Google AdWords Trial a go

• The cost includes set up and optimisation of an ad campaign, plus $125 of free advertising from Google.
• At the end of the trial you’ll receive recommendations for future advertising, you’ll know approximately how much you need to pay per click to web traffic via Google AdWords and whether this approach helps you generate more business.

This offer ends on 30 September 2011 – after that the price goes up!

Read the full details about the AdWords trial and if you’d like to discuss the options for your product or services, send me an email or give me a call on 03 9340 9018.

Do you have an example of a landing page that works well with AdWords? Leave a comment and let us know.

Until next time

Melinda

My business partner in Grassroots Internet Strategy, Serena Star-Leonard, wrote a book that was published this year titled “How to Retire in 12 Months”.

The book is about figuring out what you’re passionate about, working out a way to turn that passion into profit and then using the opportunities created by the internet to do just that.

And the cool thing is that every day I work with clients who are having a red hot go at using the internet to create an opportunity to change their life.

They are generally either people who are using a website as part of their marketing plan for their full time business, or people who are employed by someone else while they create an online business and build it up to a point where they can leave their job.

Here are Serena’s tips for how to use a website to change your life.

1. Identify a topic that you are passionate about, and make sure that it is something you’ll be willing to speak about every day.

It’s a good idea to do some research to find out what already exists in relation to your topic, but don’t be put off if something similar already exists. You are what is unique and you are what can make your business stand out.

2. Use the technology that it is available to create a website for the business

There are so many low cost tools available now that it’s relatively easy to get started. Tools like WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics and Mail Chimp.

The biggest decision you’ll need to make about your website is what areas will you learn and do yourself, and which parts you will outsource.

Then you just need to get started and keep taking action to make things happen.

3. Build your community and your content

Once your website is set up, you have something valuable to share so go ahead and share it to get the word out.  Create a marketing plan and start implementing it.

Creating content and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can be time consuming so work out a plan related to how much time you have, and whether or not you have the budget to outsource some or all of your marketing.

4. Keep on going

Keep reading. Keep learning. Keep marketing. Keep trying new things. And keep building relationships with your readers and people in your industry.

For more details on the steps you need to go through, grab a copy of Serena’s book.

Once you get set up and start effectively marketing your website and blog, you’ll find that it can change your life by:

• Giving you an open forum to express yourself and receive feedback
• Generating opportunities through meeting like minded people
• Generating an income without having to work from 9 to 5
• Giving you freedom to work from wherever you like (as long as there is an internet connection) and whatever time of day, or night, you like
• Giving you the personal satisfaction of doing something you like
• Not having to wake up to an alarm clock (unless of course you want to).

There is a huge learning curve once you dip your toe into the online marketing pond, so if you decide to take this path (or you already are), hopefully you’ll enjoy the challenge.

In addition to the info above, my tips are:

• Accept that you have to put a lot of work in to make your business successful
• Accept that things will probably take twice as long as you expect them to.

In the next few weeks Serena and I will launch the fourth version of our Grassroots Internet Strategy website (5th if you count the free WordPress version that we initially set up). That’s quite a lot in less than two years, even for two website marketing peeps such as ourselves! But it has all been part of the process.

We started by putting something together relatively quickly so that we could get started, and as we’ve learned more and more about WordPress and new methods of online marketing, we continually upgraded the website to meet our needs and capitalise on new business opportunities.

Need some expert input to get you up and running faster?

If you’re ready to find out how to set up a website and create the foundation of your dream lifestyle, check out Serena’s Website Launch Pad course

Google AdWords is a great way to increase traffic to your website, particularly if it is competitive to get your website to appear high up in the organic results.

A lot of business owners set up and run their own AdWords campaigns, which is relatively easy to do.  The hard part is optimising your Ads over time to make sure you’re getting the best possible Return On Investment from your AdWords spend.

Getting a few details wrong can cost you a lot of money!

I work with lot of clients either managing their AdWords campaigns or coaching them on how to optimise their own campaigns.

Here are some of the mistakes that are made regularly, plus easy ways to fix them.

1. Not Linking Your AdWords and Google Analytics Accounts

—Google Analytics shows how each web visitor behaves once they reach your website.

By linking your AdWords and Analytics accounts, you’ll get information like the number of pages viewed and the time spent on your website, broken down to the keyword that the visitor typed into Google before clicking through to your website from your Ad.

—In the long term, having access to this information means that you can pause keywords that bounce and keep paying for those where the web traffic performs better.

To link your accounts:

• Use the same email to log in to your AdWords and Analytics account
• Check that you have Administrator level access to your Google Analytics
• In AdWords, go to the Green “Reporting and Tools” tab, pull down to “Google Analytics”, select “I already have an account” and follow the steps to do the linking.

2. Targeting the Wrong Location

One of the great features of AdWords is the ability to target a specific area. This can be set at the level of Country, State, City, specified radius around an address or a custom area marked on a map.

Setting the target area means that only people in your target location will see your Ad and therefore you will only pay for clicks from people within your target area.

To set your target location:

• Go to the Settings tab
• Under “Locations and Languages”, where it says “In what geographical locations do you want your ads to appear?” click Edit.
• There are 4 tabs on the next screen. Generally I go to the “Search” tab, type in the name of the city, state or country I want to target, click “Find” and then select the appropriate place from the selections that Google gives you.
• If you want to target a specified area around an address, go to the “Custom” tab, type in the address, select if you would like the address to show in your ads, add the number of kilometres where you’d like your ad to show and then “View on Map” to see if you’ve covered the suburbs that are in your target area.

The “Custom” targeting feature is particularly useful if you are a business that targets clients from your local area. Often though, because the number of searches for your keywords in your target area can be relatively low, you might need your ads to show in a high position in order to capture the clicks that are available.

3. Directing Ads to your Home Page

If your ads are directed to your Home Page (which often includes a lot of information), your visitors from AdWords might bounce if they can’t immediately find what they are looking for.

Ideally, direct your Ads to a targeted landing page that:

To get this right you need to do some experimenting.

Move your ads up or down by changing your Maximum CPC Bid (while keeping an eye on your Click Through Rate).

It takes some testing to find the right position for your ads where you are paying a lower Cost Per Click than the top spot, but still getting enough clicks per day.  After keeping an eye on your ads for a while you’ll get a feel for the right spot.

5. Not Using Conversion Tracking

If you don’t set up Conversion Tracking it is harder to evaluate the return from your AdWords spend.

WordPress web software is being used by more and more people around the world to create their website or blog.

• WordPress is the most widely used web software, used by over 14% of all websites
• WordPress is the dominant Content Management System (CMS), used more than 54% of the time where a CMS is used in a website.

People use WordPress because it is easy

And I mean “wow”, really easy.  Sure, there are some tricky things that are best left for a developer, but once your website is set up, if you have a bit of knowledge and the ability to search for information online, the WordPress sky is the limit!

I have always been happy with this website, it was set up with a Content Management System that made it easy for me to make and publish updates to the copy.  But as I used WordPress for two other websites, I became aware of some of the things that I couldn’t do easily with my previous Content Management System.

I worked with Tessa Needham Creative to recreate the look and feel of my website in WordPress, which now gives me access to the extra functionality that I want.

Use WordPress for your whole website, or if you need a new blog added

If your website has limitations in terms of you being able to update and optimise your copy without involving your web developer, you could either move all of your website to WordPress*, or, you could add on a WordPress* blog to make it easy to create and share new content.

* There are two different kinds of WordPress website. WordPress.com and WordPress.org  In this article I am referring to WordPress.org

Read more about the different types of WordPress here.

Adding WordPress to your Website makes it easy for you to do things yourself (instead of paying someone else!):

1. Update your copy and add new articles whenever you want to
2. Optimise your copy to help increase your web traffic from Google
3. Embed videos from YouTube so that they can be played directly from your website
4. Add forms from that let people subscribe via email to your updates
5. Make changes to the items that you have in your side column, add things and take things away
6. Let other people share your articles and content via Facebook, Twitter and other social media
7. Add new links to your Main and Secondary Navigation
8. Add a Twitter or Facebook feed to your side column
9. Create “Categories” and “Tags” to help people find your articles based on the topic they are interested in
10. Add Google Analytics to collect data that helps you improve your website.

A lot of the things mentioned above are done using “Plugins” which can be easily added to WordPress to give specific functionality.

WordPress even makes the tricky stuff easy

Because my previous website was quite well established, we also had to do a few tricky things.  So that none of the inbound links I have been building to optimise my website will be broken, we had to redirecting URLs from the old website to the URLs in this website, which are slightly different.  Once Tessa found the right Plugin, this was a straight forward process.

Once you’ve decided that WordPress.org is the right platform for your website, there are a lot of options to choose from, depending upon your expectations and the functionality that you need.  Find out more in the article on Which WordPress website is right for your business.

Granted it took me a while to move all my content to WordPress, but now that it’s done, I couldn’t be happier!

What’s your experience with WordPress?  And what do you love most about what it lets you do easily?

Until next time

Melinda

P.S.  Need help using WordPress and getting familiar with Plugins?

Do it the easy way. Download these FREE eBooks from Tessa Needham Creative.

Do they explain what the website is about?

Or is it simply a copy of the name of the website, or perhaps a welcome message?

The importance of the Title Tag for Search Engine Optimisation is becoming more well known but many website owners are still not yet using it effectively.

The Title Tag is added into the code of your website by your developer.  Just as the sign over the door to your offices explains what your business does, the Title Tag helps visitors know they have found what they were looking for and also provides key information to help search engines identify what your website is about.

Include the most important keywords and phrases in your Title Tag, up to a maximum of 65 characters including spaces.  Put the most important words at the start.  Ensure that the Title Tag is relevant to the content of your website by using the same keywords in your content in headings, subheadings, body text and as link words.

Keyword selection will be covered in a future edition of click tips.

To further increase your website’s potential to show up in search engine results, add a unique and targeted Title Tag to each page of your website that covers a unique topic.

To see the Title Tag of any web page, go to “View” in the top menu, and then Source.  You’ll see that the Title is included after <title>.

If this sounds like web babble and you need advice about your website’s Title Tag,contact us.

Click Tip Summary

The Title Tag is the sentence that appears at the top of an internet browser when it is displaying a website.  Adding a carefully created Title Tag to your website is one of the most important things you can do to help your website to rank higher in search engine results for your chosen keywords.

• understand the needs of your clients and prospects
• build business relationships
• generate warm website traffic.

The 5 second Twitter overview

Twitter is an online tool that allows you to share information and expand your network.

• Unless your account is private, anyone can follow you.
• You send out messages which can be read by your followers.
• The messages are called tweets, which can be a maximum of 140 characters long.
• You can also follow people, and then you’ll receive a copy of their tweets.

However, for many users, starting out on Twitter is like visiting a foreign country where you don’t understand the language or culture.  Once you get an account set up it can be hard to figure out how to meet (follow) the right people and “get in the loop”.

5 tips to get you started on Twitter, the Australian way; you can be a good bloke or a fab chick (and avoid being a drongo).

1. It’s OK to follow people you don’t know, really it is

For many of us, following people you don’t know is a weird concept (I don’t mean slinking down the street and hiding behind power poles to avoid being seen, that is weird ?).  Especially if you’re used to Facebook where you can Accept or Decline each friend request.

On Twitter “following” is the done thing.

Follow the types of people that you want to interact with. They might be people in your target audience that you can network with, or people in your community or industry that you can share information with.

Read more about how to follow and get followed on Twitter.

2. Listen with your ears, not your mouth

Twitter is a great place to listen to what people are saying; about their competitors, their products, their affiliates, their local area and pretty much anything you want to know about that impacts your business.

By listening (reading other people’s tweets), you’ll get a feel for the type of things people tweet about and how to engage with others.  If people are tweeting about things you find boring or irrelevant, you can unfollow them, which is perfectly OK (and they don’t get notified!).

3. Don’t be a loud mouth

Don’t write tweets that purely promote your business, products or services. That’s not what it’s about. Loud mouths belong at the footy, not on Twitter

You’ll get more followers by writing tweets that contain information that is valuable to others.

Also avoid sending a barrage of tweets in quick succession, instead, spread your tweets out over a time period.

4. Be a Good Sport

If someone follows you, be a good sport and follow them back, unless there is a good reason not to, like they are a loud mouth.

If someone retweets you (forwards your tweet out to their followers), be polite and say thank you.

5. Have a go mate!

Invest a little time and give Twitter a try – it’s free to have a go!

Now there is an easy way for you to avoid wasting time and effort on a trial and error approach to Twitter; the comprehensive, step-by-step “Twitter for Business” guide shows you how to set up and use Twitter like a marketing expert! Check it out today.

In my sales and marketing career over the last 16 years I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of great designers and working with Judy reminded me what a difference a great design, and working with a great designer, makes.

If you’ve ever worked with a bad designer, I’m sure you immediately know what I mean.

To see some examples of bad design, scroll through this article (actually it’s pretty funny too).

Worst Websites of 2010: The Contenders.

Where your website is concerned, a great looking design is a critical factor in your online success.

• Your website needs a good, clean design that portrays the right image.
• Having easy to use, simple navigation and clear layout will encourage people to visit your website regularly, and also maximise the opportunities for them to respond to your Call to Action.
• Make sure your web copy is easy to read: avoid using small fonts or dark background colours.
• It should be fast to load, without any music or videos that play automatically.
• And personally, if I see any yellow highlighted text I’m straight out of there!

When selecting a designer to work with, always ask for samples of their work, to get a first hand view of the design quality and creativity.

Your designer will need basic information like:

• What you need designed; brochure, flyer, banner ad, website, business card etc
• The colours of your logo
• The size of the item they are designing
• The file type the final document should be supplied as
• How much budget you have
• What kind of timeframe you expect the design to be ready in.

Along with this basic information, the more detail you can provide about your brand and marketing objectives, the easier it is for a great designer to create a design that makes you go “wow”!.

Discuss questions like:

• What your business does, your best qualities, and your future plans
• What is the unique idea that separates your business from others
• Which part of your business gets the best results
• Which audience your product or service is targeted to
• How your target market typically discovers your brand (by personal networking, websites, printed materials, advertising, conferences, etc.)
• How you would like to be perceived, and how you are perceived now
• The markets you would like to move into.

The designer can also ask for:

• Samples of designs that you like
• Information about your existing marketing programs, and how successful they are.

As the client, you can expect the Designer to:

• Listen to you to get an accurate perception of your needs
• Give you a proposal for the project including the estimated costs, plus the cost of additional work and changes, if required.
• Be responsive to your required timeframes and maintain open lines of communication.

And when you would like changes made to a draft design, be as specific as you can.

Don’t let your requirements get lost in translation! You can even create a mock up or show examples of another design to show exactly what you mean.