Client Website variations

[oggyswain]

I was curious to know how everyone handles Website Sample variations. What I mean is when you are showing your potential client sample websites to choose from.

 

Do you work on one site and that's what they get?

 

Do you give them a few options and if you do are they complete or are they just templates with nonsense copy?

 

I am curious because up until now I have been giving my client various template options. Which sometime can cause problems.

 

Interested in your responses.

 

Thanks

[LSW]

I always made versions, either different layouts and or different color schemes.

 

As for how to do that, it sort of depends on how you supply it? Would you send it to them or sit in a room with them. Your room or theirs? Your laptop or their machine?

 

I have used Power Point for a rough design ideas, helps them visualize colors and layouts. Mist people have support on their machines with either MS Office or Open Office.

 

Photoshop over the last few versions has made it easier to turn layers on and off to show them if it is on your machine.

 

You can use the free Adobe Flex SDK to create a basic flash based application that you can either insert screen shots or do a basic mock up of the interface or even multiple pages in. Then you can use buttons and even sliding bars to allow them to choose your colors or create their own which you then record or have the app save. For instance, here is the link to a flex application that helps you adjust settings which it then writes as Flex CSS (Which is not really CSS at all). Pick a component on the left, adjust and visualize in the middle and the CSS is on the right. Flex 2 Style Explorer

 

Note that Flex 2 is older replaced by Flex 3 and then Flash Builder 4/4.5 (aka flex 4/4.5), the last which now uses Skins as well as CSS to format applications. So you could have a layout and buttons that switch skins from one color to the next or even as with the link, let the customer choose for instance what shade of a color they like.

 

The basic flex would not be difficult, the more complicated stuff would take more time, but would be worth it if you have lots of customers and then you could even offer Flex sites. You can reuse the basic Flex application for each customer and maybe keep it web based on your site so they can check the layout out at their convenience or get other opinions for staff etc. or create a Adobe AIR app which you could just mail them, like mailing them an EXE file. These are just some suggestions and I am sure their are other ideas like slideshow scripts for screen shots.

[falkencreative]

For me, it really just depends on the client or the project. A lot of the projects I've been working on recently are relatively low budget, so in most cases, I'll show them an initial mockup and then make changes based on feedback. Some contracts will allow for up to 3 different concepts, but in most cases I show them one sample at first and only do additional samples if I'm way off target for some reason. I usually present my mockups as a static JPG image inside an HTML document (for example: http://falkendev.com/mvgs/home1.html) and the content within the mockup is as accurate as possible. If I don't have real content, I'll usually write headers and other minor text, but I'll use lorum ipsum for paragraphs of content.

 

This of course assumes that I am doing custom design and development, not working from templates.