This type of role comes with its own lists of benefits and challenges to consider before throwing yourself headlong down this career path.

Today we’ll be exploring all those areas in detail and we’ll also be asking other people in the industry for their experiences to get a broad overview of the entire subject.

Whether you currently work for an agency, as a student, or as a freelancer, there should be some relevant and important information here to keep you interested!

Stepping Into an In-House Environment

Working as an in-house web designer for a company is very different to working in an agency environment. Here, you’d better get used to being the “tech guy” pretty quick, because the people you work with aren’t web designers at all.

Coming from an agency background the prospect of an in-house position can look appealing because you can pretty easily become the most knowledgeable person at the company on the subject of web design, and run your own agenda – to a certain extent – on that basis. Coming from a student or freelancing background, the process of working nine to five may be daunting but the prospect of working for an exciting company who are outside of your niche may be exciting enough to attract you.

A huge benefit to working in-house is that you get to see a project through and continue to drive the innovation forward for a single company on the web. At an agency you might just do the build, but in-house you make an ongoing difference each and every day.

Rick Nunn works in-house as the Senior Web Designer for an International Courier Services company and he talks about why he feels this is important:

“I thoroughly enjoy being an in-house designer, it gives me the ability to work on much larger and more complex projects for much longer periods of time than would ever be possible as a freelance designer. I’ve been working on one particular project for nearly 18 months now, seeing this project evolve from an idea into something that works so well and has such a large (and happy) user-base is awesome. Being involved from the really early stages is great — you really get emotionally invested with the project because you know it’s going to be a very large part of your life, that’s great for me — it pushes me to work harder and smarter.

You also get to try things and take risks that you wouldn’t be able to do as a freelancer and then react to those things directly from customer (as a posed to client) feedback. Did I mention working with a team is awesome too? Well it is, sitting round a table with passionate designers and developers discussing a new feature, or function, or whatever… will make you want to be more awesome. I’m not saying it’s all roses, there are things I miss about being freelance bug there is no substitute for seeing a company successfully progress as a result of work you have poured yourself into.”

What to Expect

As an in-house web designer you’ll probably form part of a very small team – indeed, on most occasions, possibly even just you. This can be a challenge in terms of not having a larger support network but it can also be a benefit because you will typically represent an entire department and for that reason have much closer access to the head(s) of the company. If you’re looking to advance in terms of pay level and responsibilities then this certainly isn’t a bad position to be in.

Another benefit of working in-house is that you can make yourself incredibly valuable to the company if you want to be. Whip out some Google Analytics advanced user segmentation data to show where the current site is under-performing and what steps should be taken to improve revenue and you will almost certainly impress your boss. In fact you can use this strategy in interviews if you want to really impress, the author of this article has successfully obtained several jobs this way.

Japh Thomson has seven years of in-house experience as web developer, he offers some words of wisdom with regards to things to expect and some main benefits of this career path: “One of the best things about working in-house is working in a team or across multiple teams where everyone is serious about what’s getting done, and the time pressures are less, really gives a good atmosphere for making sure the job is done right. The converse of the above, is that it can also end up with the “design by committee” approach, which is not so much fun.”

Gavin Elliott is new to working as an in-house web designer but has some incredibly valuable input on the subject when talking about the benefits of this type of work: “You have the utmost respect from people within the business because they’re not designers. They trust what you say but have their own point of view. It’s like having your own in-house usability test. You have enough freedom to push your own ideas and work on things that excite you, you can push your own design style a lot more.”

Luc Pestille has just over a year of experience working in-house and he had this to offer about the benefits: “Being answerable to the same company as the product you’re building is for – your boss can be a lot more lenient. Not having to deal with clients in the traditional way is a wonderful thing if you’re as introverted as most of us technical/creative people.”

Challenges to Overcome

Unlike when working for an agency, you probably won’t have a very structured day-to-day work life. You are the project manager, the designer, the developer, and everything in between. It’s up to you to take the flimsy and sometimes poorly thought-through ideas of the people higher up in the food chain and turn them into a reality. Or at the very a least a working concept.

One of the other biggest challenges to overcome is that, as mentioned, you’re the tech guy. You are no longer a user experience professional, a graphic designer, a Ruby developer, you are just a tech guy. What does that mean? Well, it means that when the printer stops working, you fix it. When Skype is acting up, you fix it. When a router is jumbling up its network addresses, you fix it. No, it doesn’t matter what you say, because even if you have no idea how to do any of those things, you’re still deemed to be the “most capable” person in the office when it comes to anything that uses electricity. You can come up with as many metaphors as you like to explain the situation, hell you can even design some t-shirts, but it won’t help. This is one that you’ll just have to put up with.

John Slater worked in-house for a company for just over a year and his less-than-positive experience is an important contrast to some of the benefits already highlighted. John says:

“There are a few major problems designing in-house. I found working on the same project quite fun initially as it allowed the project to expand rapidly and become something I could be proud of. However after the honeymoon period I found working on the same project over and over again quite tedious. I often felt like I was moving in circles with the website and although I spent every waking moment designing and building the website it felt as if it was going nowhere.

My second peeve with in-house was the all famous “Design By Committee”. The internal projects would be tweaked and then the boss would review it, get everyone involved and we would be back to square one making the same changes I made 15 revisions ago. Despite many many meetings to discuss the website we had little progress in the 10 months we worked on the project.

My final pitfall has to be leaving the company with nothing to show for it. I had worked there just over a year and worked endlessly on this massive website for a big company, and yet when I left the company the website was still sitting internally awaiting further changes before it could go live. This made it extremely hard to convince prospective employers that I was efficient and hard working, it also left a rather big void in my portfolio, a void that could have been filled with one year of work.

This was just my experience, I’m not going to say that the company was managed in a perfect way, it wasn’t, so this may just have been me working for the wrong company on the wrong project. My whole in-house experience has made me think twice about taking an in-house job, client work allows me to be more creative. Which is what I want.”

Future Career Moves

Working in-house is fairly limited in terms of future prospects. Most of the time you’ll come into the company at a level that’s either as high as you can ever go, or one step away from it.

The only long term benefits come in the form of salaries and bonuses. If, however, your career focus is as much on being an entrepreneur as it is on being a web designer, then everything changes substantially.

Working as the in-house web designer for a startup can teach you an incredible amount about starting and running a business that will be absolutely invaluable if and when you set out to do the same by yourself.

This post was authored exclusively for WDD by John O’Nolan, a core member of the WordPress UI Team, writer and entrepreneur based in Surrey in the United Kingdom. John loves to talk to people, so why not follow @JohnONolan on twitter too?

What do you think? Have you worked in an in-house environment before? What advise would you offer to someone who is about to do the same? Let us know in the comments!

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!

They often make it out like anyone still working in the corporate world is just a schmuck with no ambition. But the truth is, there are plenty of reasons not to start freelancing.

Below are twenty such reasons, all laid out so you can make an informed decision about whether freelancing is really something you want to do in your career.

There’s nothing wrong with staying in a corporate job, just as there’s nothing wrong with setting out on your own. But it’s a choice every designer and developer needs to make for themselves.

One note: when we talk about “corporate jobs”, we’re talking mostly about design firms with multiple employees (whether they’re corporations or not), but most of it also applies to in-house design teams at large companies.

1. You Think It Will Be Easier Than a Corporate Job

A lot of people considering freelancing think it will be easier than their current corporate job. After all, they’ll only have to take on projects they want to take on, they won’t have a boss or coworkers to deal with, and they’ll be able to set their own hours.

But most freelancers, when the first start out at least, aren’t able to be too picky about the work they take on. And while they don’t have coworkers or a boss to deal with, that means they also don’t have anyone to turn to if they get stuck on a project.

There are still clients to deal with, too. And the whole thing about setting your own hours pretty much just means you can choose which sixteen hours in the day you want to work when you’re getting started.

2. You Don’t Have Much Experience

If you’re just getting out of school, you may not have much experience to draw on. And there are a couple of reasons why experience is more important when you’re a freelancer.

First of all, you’ll need a portfolio to show prospective clients if you want them to hire you. While you can always use personal projects, it’s also good if you have at least a few sites in your portfolio that you completed for other people (bonus points if they’re not friends or family). This shows a prospective client that you’re legitimate, and that you’ve had happy clients in the past.

The other reason is that experience proves to both you and the client that you’re capable of finishing projects. If you’ve never done anything but personal projects, there’s no indication that you’ll be able to finish a project.

Freelance designers need to be able to handle client requests and revisions, as there will almost always be things your client wants to change, no matter how great your initial design is. And until you’ve finished a client project, you don’t even have any proof that you have what it takes to work with clients.

3. You Have No Business Sense

When you’re freelancing, you generally don’t have anyone around to handle invoicing, collections, marketing, PR, and the myriad other tasks that corporate design firms handle for you. These are all things you’ll need to deal with yourself when you start freelancing.

Of course, you can always outsource some or all of these functions, but you may find it prohibitively expensive when you’re starting out. It’s better if you know how to do all of them yourself.

Keeping your own books is especially important, as it gives you a clear picture of how much money you have coming and how much is going out (and where it’s going). That’s important if you want to stay in business.

4. You Need Benefits

Some people can’t get by without benefits. If you have existing health problems, you’ll almost certainly need health insurance. And even if you’re healthy, that’s no guarantee you will be in the future. Plus, if you have kids, you’ll likely want health insurance for them, too.

This is one of those issues that’s not going to matter in countries with universal health coverage, but even in those countries there are other benefits you may not want to lose.

If you’re self-employed, you’ll no longer have employer contributions to your retirement plans. You won’t get paid sick days or personal days anymore. All of these things will need to be built into your budget or schedule.

5. You Think the Pay Will Be Better

Many considering switching to freelancing think the pay will be better. After all, they’ll get to keep all the money they’ve billed out, without sharing any of it with an employer. And that’s true. But you’ll also be responsible for paying all of your own taxes (in the U.S., at least, that amounts to an extra 7.5% in payroll taxes that you have to pay that would otherwise be paid by an employer).

You also have all sorts of other business-related expenses you’ll need to pay. Things like office supplies, new equipment, software, and all those other expenses that go along with running a business will all have to be paid by you.

There’s also the difference between hours worked versus billable hours to contend with. Not everything you do will be billable work. Time you spend on administrative tasks aren’t billable.

If you screw up on a project and have to take time to fix it, that’s usually not billable either (at least not ethically). At a corporate job, you generally get paid either for the hours you actually work or on a salaried rate, regardless of how much the client is billed.

6. You Have No Self-Discipline

If you can’t discipline yourself to actually work, then you’re not going to make it as a freelancer. If you find you’re spending hours playing video games or on Facebook instead of working, you’re going to have a very hard time finding enough billable hours to pay your own bills.

When you work in a corporate environment, there’s always the threat of being let go if you goof off too much. When you work from home, you don’t have that same threat lingering. But if you don’t get client work done on time, you’ll have unhappy clients and, eventually, no clients.

If you can’t discipline yourself to work when you need to, you’ll be better off sticking with a corporate gig.

7. You Don’t Love Your Work

So many people who work the usual 9-to-5 don’t really love their jobs. They don’t wake up in the morning looking forward to going to work. But they do it in order to earn a paycheck and put food on the table. Sometimes this is because of the work environment itself, but others times it’s because they don’t really enjoy the work they’re doing.

If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re probably not going to love it any more once you’re freelancing. Freelancing is hard work, and if you’re already struggling to find the motivation to get your job done, you’ll probably struggle even harder once there’s no boss there to motivate you.

8. You Think the Hours are Better

When you own your own business, you’ll likely end up working twelve- to sixteen-hour days five to seven days a week, at least for the first few years.

Freelancing is like any other business. Sure, once you’re established, you’ll likely be able to reduce your hours and only take on higher-paying projects. But in the interim, you’ll probably have to take on any work you can get to build up your reputation and a stable of regular clients.

It’s also likely that your workflow won’t be as efficient as it could be for your first few months, or even years, in business. You’ll spend time on unnecessary activities. You’ll end up repeating things because you don’t have good methods for keeping track of everything.

And because of this, you’ll spend more time than is necessary on a lot of things. Time and effort will eventually fix these issues, but they’ll still have to be dealt with for a little while.

9. You Have No Space in Your House/Apartment/Bedroom for an Office

You’ll need a dedicated space for working. This doesn’t have to be an entire office, but you should at least have a desk that’s only used for your work. The idea that you can do everything from your kitchen table is likely just going to cause you headaches. As will the idea that you can do all your work from the local coffee shop.

The good news is that most people can find a quiet corner in their house, apartment, or bedroom where they can set up a permanent workspace. If it’s in a room shared with other activities, an armoire-style workstation is often preferable, so you can “close up” for the day and not have to stare at your unfinished work.

10. You Don’t Know Where to Find Clients

You’ll likely need to seek out some clients when you first get started. If you have no idea where to look or how to contact potential clients, you’ll probably have a hard time finding work.

Come up with a plan before you start making the transition to freelancing. Tip: Stealing clients from your previous employer is not the best way to find clients.

11. You Have No Project Management Skills or Experience

Freelancers need to be able to manage a project from start to finish.

When working in a corporate environment, you may have only had to deal with certain aspects of a design project. But if you’re freelancing, you’ll need to be able to manage every aspect of the design and development process. This includes outsourcing specific portions of design or development, finding out what the client needs and wants, working within the client’s budget and timeframe, and managing problems that will inevitably crop up.

If you’ve never managed a design project from start to finish, you’ll likely have plenty of missteps on your first few projects. Either get some experience with project management, or read a lot of books, blogs, and anything else you can get your hands on to learn the ins and outs.

12. You Don’t Want to Deal With People

When you freelance, you’re going to have to deal with clients. And while you often have more control over how those interactions go, you’ll still have plenty of face-time with other people. Don’t freelance in order to escape dealing with people.

13. You Can’t Stand Up for Yourself

You’ll almost certainly end up with difficult clients at some point in your freelancing career.

If you can’t be assertive and stand up for yourself, you’ll end up getting walked all over. You need to have the confidence to stand up to a client who tries to get you to work for free, or who tries to bully you into reducing your price once the work is complete.

You also need to be able to handle clients who don’t pay their bills or make unreasonable demands.

14. You Have No Time-Management Skills

Time management can be one of the most challenging aspects of freelancing. It’s also one of the most important. But most designers find it easy to spend too much time on a certain project or aspect of their business (or personal life) to the detriment of other parts of their business or life.

Time management for freelancers consists of two important things: time you spend on your work versus time you spend on your personal life, and time you spend on one project versus another project. Setting regular working hours helps with the first one, even if all those regular hours consist of is only working until 4pm (and getting up earlier to allow yourself more working hours) or only working 8 hours a day (regardless of which 8 hours).

The second one is a bit trickier. Track how much time you’re spending on each project and be aware of what you quoted to the client. Try to estimate how much time each part of the project will take, and then try to stick to that estimate.

15. You Can’t Self-Motivate

This one is closely related to self-discipline, but takes it a step forward. Discipline is all about doing the things you have to do. Motivation is finding the wherewithall to do things you want to do.

There should be things related to your freelance business that you don’t have to do, but want to do or will make your business stronger or more enjoyable.

If you only ever do the bare minimum, you’re kind of missing the point of freelancing and being your own boss. Self-motivation means you can do things above and beyond what’s required to improve your freelancing business.

16. You Don’t Want to Maintain a Professional Image

When you work for a corporate design firm, you may never have to deal with clients directly. Clients might not even really know who you are. And that’s okay, because usually they’re more interested in the company than the individual designer.

When you’re freelancing, though, it’s your name that gets tied to your work. That means you need to keep a professional image for the best business results.

If a client Googles your name and all they find are drunken photos of you from spring break, it’s going to damage your reputation. You need to be willing to keep your private life private, and to act professionally in public. Hint: use the security settings on social networking sites to limit who sees what.

17. You Want Paid Vacations

As a freelancer, you don’t get paid vacations. You’ll need to either budget accordingly throughout the year to cover your vacation expenses, or make a big push right before a vacation to get everything done. Of course, the longer your vacation, the more advanced planning you’ll need. And in many cases, you might still have to deal with client emergencies while you’re away.

If you’ve become very accustomed to having four weeks of paid vacation each year, that can be a big adjustment to make. The main thing you’ll need to do is to notify your clients well in advance that you’ll be taking a vacation if you’re going to be gone for more than a couple days.

18. You’re a Workaholic

When there’s no one telling you to stop working at the end of the day, it’s easy for some people to just keep working. This can be just as detrimental to many as not working enough, though, as it can quickly lead to burnout.

If you’re not able to limit the hours you work, you’re probably going to have a short-lived freelancing career. Your work will suffer if you’re overworking, as will your family and personal life. It’s important to set limits to the number of hours you work, and to only take on projects that fit within those time constraints.

One possible solution is to let yourself be a workaholic for three or four days a week, but then not working at all on those other days. This can help to satisfy those workaholic tendencies while still allowing you enough time to recharge.

19. You Don’t Want to Keep Regular Hours

The freedom to work when you want to is one of the biggest draws for many freelancers. The idea of not having to work 9-to-5 is a huge plus. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to keep regular working hours.

First of all, most of your clients probably do keep regular 9-to-5 hours. You’ll need to be available when they’re working and want to get in touch with you.

The other issue is that if you don’t have a set work schedule, you’ll probably find you have a hard time getting everything done. Figure out what time of day you work best, whether that’s from 6pm till midnight or from 3am till noon and then work those hours. But make sure you’re available during at least some regular business hours so your clients can get in touch with you when they need to.

20. You Don’t Like Being Alone

Freelancing can be a lonely business. In many cases, you’re not meeting clients in person very often. You don’t have coworkers around. And you’re probably working out of your house. If you don’t like being alone for long stretches of time, you’ll likely find you’re not well-suited to freelancing.

Of course, there are solutions to this. You can work out of your house some days (from a coffee shop or coworking space). You can foster non-work relationships so you’re interacting with people when you’re not working. Or you might want to set a regular lunch-date with other friends who freelance or work from home.

The Bottom Line

Freelancing is not for everyone. And there’s nothing wrong with that. So often in creative fields we feel like if we’re working in a corporate environment that we’re somehow not as creative as those who have set out on their own. But there’s very little truth in that.

Freelancing is a career choice and something that every designer and developer has to decide on in respect to their personal situation.

For some, freelancing is a dream come true. But for others, it’s like a prison sentence. Don’t feel ashamed to stick with your corporate job if that’s where you’re comfortable and it’s fulfilling to you.

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

For the seasoned freelancers out there, what kind of challenges have you experienced and how did you solve them? Please share your own tips below so that future freelancers can learn from your experiences…

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!

Designers would play ping-pong below; people were allowed to drink beer at work; and brilliant ideas would flow effortlessly from your mind into multi-million-dollar campaigns for clients like Nike and Coca-Cola.

In fact, you got a job at a large corporation and were shown to a desk in a sea of light-gray fabric-covered cubicles. Instead of 30-foot ceilings, you have surprisingly low ceilings, covered with a substance that you could swear is asbestos.

You were given a 90-page handbook on how to create drop-shadows and sent off to populate templates for product brochures.

Sounds like hell. But outlined below are a few ways to improve your outlook on work life, foster creativity in you and the business and, most importantly, bring some fun into your corporate job.

Accept the Corporate Mindset, and Then Make Your Mark

Image by Tim Patterson

Working for a large corporation comes with many perks, such as benefits packages, consistent pay checks, team collaboration and not having to chase down new business. But it also comes with communications guidelines, branding standards and templates.

To maintain your creativity, you have to look beyond the projects in queue.

Getting used to the corporate mindset is difficult for some (me included), but embracing it and learning where you can and cannot make concessions is a crucial part of success. For example, I once led an initiative to change the way we marketed a segment of our products.

Instead of simply opening the packaging template and dropping in an image of the new product, I designed a template with a new photography standard, new colorways and a new ad campaign to coincide with the product launch. Of course, I produced what the project originally called for, but I was also able to present another option to the client that included a well-researched, integrated campaign that I had designed from the ground up. Damn, was that ever fun.

Think Like an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs are constantly looking for opportunities in the market to offer something new or make something better.

You can have the same mindset in your corporation. Constantly be on the look-out for ways to improve your company’s products, processes, vendor contracts, print-vendor relationships, color-correction issues, design workflow, online-advertising testing practices, conference-calling ability, whatever.

You’ll see problems and holes in the processes of many of your daily workflows. Instead of complaining about them, you could be the person improving them.

Seek Out Challenges

Few designers want to sit for hours on end putting silos on images because it’s tedious, unchallenging work.

For me, the best projects are the ones that take me a little out of my comfort zone, and I actively seek those out. Not only do they keep me engaged at work but they increase my skill-set and make me more needed to management and the entire team.

I even like to look beyond my team for challenges, and now people come to me for input on all types of projects, from software implementation to video direction to website usability testing.

Scare yourself and you’ll find interesting ways to learn new skills and bolster your creativity.

Become a Free Agent

Want to move to a different team? Let that team’s leader know by offering to help it out!

For months I wanted to move from the print team to multimedia team. Having pretty good knowledge of Flash, I would volunteer for projects whenever they were overloaded.

Eventually, an opportunity to join the team opened up, and because the team leader was already familiar with me and the quality of my work, I was the logical choice for the job. I managed to create the situation I wanted, even though it wasn’t what I was hired for.

Be the Go-To Guy

Know of a huge campaign coming up? I can assure you that the creative director will be overwhelmed.

Mention to him or her that you’d like to help out in any way you can, and show an example of what you can do. As with any client pitch, put yourself in his or her position to figure out where you can help out. You might get the opportunity to work on a high-profile campaign or to travel to help direct a photo shoot.

Become known as a person with a wealth of good ideas, and you’ll get to work on all the fun projects. I’m constantly helping the video team when they get overloaded; consequently, I’m often asked to assist with concepting, art direction, casting, location management, etc. Because I’m not anything close to resembling a filmmaker, I find the challenge rewarding and extremely exciting.

Befriend Clients

Working in a corporate design department affords you constant access to clients. Make friends with them. Not only will it make communication easier during projects, it will also streamline feedback and approval times.

Equally important, friendship is a great way to nurture “brave clients.” Brave clients are people who get in the ring and fight for your great ideas and secure money or backing from management. So, keep the big picture in mind, and realize that when someone asks you to do something slightly outside your job description, he or she may have the key to the budget that would kickstart that pet project of yours mired in red tape.

You’ll get to know some great people who will be willing to go to bat for you in a crunch.

Conclusion

Don’t let preconceived notions hamper your experience of the corporate world. The world may not be exactly what you envisioned, but there are many ways to keep your job fun and interesting. With an open mind, a willingness to execute your ideas and a lot of hard work, you will stay creative, develop skills and advance your career. Who knows? You may even enjoy it.

Written exclusively for Webdesigner Depot by Jason Bowden, corporate-design team leader by day, freelance designer by night. You can follow him on Twitter @jason_bowden or witness his admittedly mindless personal ramblings at jasonbowden.com.

What about you? What strategies have you tried to improve your job?

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!

Having worked on both sides of job applications, I’ve seen enough to recognize what gets a person through to the interview and what gets their applications tossed.

I’ve even been able to go back over some applications I’ve sent in the past and determined what may have affected my chances for being considered. In a blatant attempt at reverse psychology, here are some of the major mistakes I’ve seen made, and made myself on applications for freelance work.

1. Correct the client’s spelling or grammar

So you really want this job but there is one glaring detail that doesn’t sit right with you: the job posting contains a noticeable typo.

Many of the people who apply for this job may not even notice it and the rest will just ignore it, but you are serious about your work. You have to let the client know that about you. Nothing like buffing a client’s ego.

The thinking behind it: You may think it helps you come off as serious. You may even think the error was a ‘red herring’ that was meant for you to catch. Chances are it is not and you are more likely to come off as egotistical.

What you are telling the client: I am going to be the annoying ‘grammar police’ guy around the office or in email correspondence. Something few freelancers will consider is that some people who hire writers might be doing it because they have no interest in writing for themselves. They aren’t hiring you to nitpick their writing (unless it’s an editing job).

2. Don’t proofread or spell check your email

The client isn’t going to bother running a spellcheck on your email for a job application so why should you? Even if there is a typo or a sentence that doesn’t make sense, he’ll figure out what you mean.

The thinking behind it: I honestly don’t know.

What you are telling the client: Aside from telling them you can’t spell? It also shows them that you didn’t take the time to use a simple tool that would fix it for you.

3. Give them too much information

Not only should you tell them your entire life story in the cover letter, you should also include a resume full of past jobs that are anything but relevant. Why wouldn’t the editor of a major blog network care that you spent 6 months working at Burger King?

The thinking behind it: If you are sending the same resume that you would use to get a job as a cashier or food service attendant, you are probably operating under the assumption that it will show you have workforce experience. You may even think that this will take the attention off the fact that you have little experience related to the job you are trying to get.

What you are telling the client: Effectively, nothing. Although you may have some dazzling related experience in there somewhere, by cramming it in with everything else the client may miss the important stuff altogether.

4. Don’t provide any samples

You’ve got a killer portfolio. You’re not going to show it to just anyone. If the client is serious they will pursue you for samples. Always leave ‘em wanting more, right?

The thinking behind it: There is a lot to be said for keeping a close eye on your work and avoiding possible plagiarism attempts. You should avoid giving out unpublished samples. You never know who is on the receiving end of an email address. However, many people think it’s alright to send an email applying for a job with a message like “please send me more information if you want samples”.

Some freelancers even have the gull to ask for advance fees before they send any samples of their work. You need to have something to show to someone who is hiring. Even if you’re just starting out and haven’t gotten any of your work published. You should at least have a free blog or web hosting account you can show people.

What you are telling the client: Asking for credentials creates a sense of mistrust between you and the client and it is insulting. You are the one who has to prove yourself here. Further, not providing samples up front might make it look like you don’t have any work or that you are hiding something (like crappy designs).

5. Ask questions that are answered in the ad

These people love talking about their businesses, so they won’t mind going over a few things they’ve already covered just for you. They will probably admire you for having the courage to ask.

At this point they are probably so dazzled and mystified by your lack of any demonstrated experience that they will do anything just to correspond with you.

The thinking behind it: There are no stupid questions. Asking questions is a sign of interest. This is only true to an extent. A job advertisement can only tell you so much. You’d better absorb all of it.

What you are telling the client: That you can’t follow simple instructions. It also gives the impression that you are inexperienced. As a freelancer, job applications are a part of your every day life. The instructions in job postings should all be familiar to you.

6. Skip reading the whole job advertisement

Most of that stuff is just there for less experienced people. You don’t need to read every single detail, especially when you can just ask questions (see above).

Besides, you haven’t got time to read it all. You’ve got to write an email which states your entire life up to the point of finding this job advertisement with no links or samples attached pointing out the client’s use of “who” instead of “whom”.

The thinking behind it: You probably think it’s just the job for you and you don’t need to read anything else because you know what you want. The problem is that clients listing a lot of information are likely doing so to save the time it takes to explain certain details to every single applicant. They may also include information that is crucial to determining the right person for the position, such as unusual hours or something that presents a moral conflict for you.

What you are telling the client: If at any point in communicating with the client it becomes apparent that you haven’t bothered to read the whole ad it will show a huge lack of commitment and likely turn them off.

7. Don’t thank them for their time

Resist the urge to be polite and courteous. This is a sign of weakness. You’ve got to play it cool and act like you don’t need it.

The thinking behind it: Forgetting to thank a potential client for reading your application is more of an issue of lack of thought. It can be an easy thing to forget, but it goes a long way when you remember.

What you are telling the client: Some may not notice but what they will do is notice when you do thank them. It isn’t a deal breaker in most cases if you forget but if you have made at least two or three other mistakes on this list it may be the final “oopsie” that gets your application rejected.

By now you should have a pretty good idea of how not to get a job and you should be well on your way to fashioning a job application that is sure to get approved.

Written exclusively for WDD by Ryan Edmunds from CrunchPlay This post is sponsored by Sensational Jobs, the job board for web professionals where you can find design jobs.

What other things do you need to take into account when applying for your next job? Please share your comments with us…

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!

A corporate website also needs to capture the feel of the company and its purpose, while remaining professional in order to attain a solid and lasting impression to its customers.

Graphics, layouts and color palettes are all essential in how the customers perceive a company when visiting their website. Dark color designs, for example, can be interpreted as serious, while blue hues give a feeling of trust.

Here are 50 corporate website designs that you can use for inspiration in your own corporate designs. 

Which are your favorites? Please share with us other corporate designs that we may have missed…

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!

This is not a criticism of clients, however. There is so little information that clearly defines their role. Sure, there is no shortage of material on usability, accessibility, online marketing and copywriting, but who has the time to read all of it?

The problem is that the client does need to have a very broad understanding (certainly more than can be communicated in a single article), however I have found that understanding certain key issues can make an enormous difference to the efficiency of a client.

What follows is a list of the 5 things that I believe will have the biggest impact on a client’s site. At least they should, if the client understands them and chooses to implement them.

1. The client is the secret to a successful website

I have worked on hundreds of websites over the past 15 years and each site’s success or failure has always been attributed to the quality of the client.

As web designers we, of course, like to emphasis our role in the process. This is what justifies our fee, however we can ultimately only point our clients in the right direction. It is their decisions that shape the site and their commitment that defines its long term future.

As web designers, I believe we need to clearly communicate to the client the importance of their role and dispel the misconception that they can hire a web designer and walk away.

Not only do we need to emphasis the importance of their role, we also need to define the extent of it.

2. Clients have a diverse and challenging role

I believe that the role of the client is by far the most complex and challenging in web design. Sure, dealing with IE6 is a pain, but that pales in comparison to the shear extent of issues that most clients need to handle.

A client has to be a:

• Visionary – capable of establishing the long term direction of their site
• Evangelist – able to promote the site both internally and externally
• Content guardian – responsible for ensuring the quality and relevancy of content
• Project coordinator – overseeing all aspects of the site as well as dealing with suppliers
• Referee – making final decisions between conflicting priorities

What is even more is that the client is supposed to know enough about a broad range of disciplines (from marketing to interface design), in order to make informed decisions. It is hardly surprising that, as web designers, we sometimes feel our clients “just don’t get it!” They are simply expected to understand too much.

Unfortunately their role is also often massively under resourced. Most of those responsible for websites are not dedicated website managers. Instead, they run their websites alongside other responsibilities in IT or marketing.

It is our responsibility to explain the role of the client and ensure that they understand how much work is involved. We cannot assume that they instinctively know this.

The danger is that if you do not clearly define the clients’ role, they will end up trying to define yours instead.

3. Clients identify problems, designers provide solutions

One of the biggest problems in most web projects is that the client starts making the decisions that are best left to the web designer. Not only does this lead to bad decisions, but also inevitably leaves the web designer feeling undervalued and frustrated.

This problem can manifest in a variety of ways, however ultimately it comes down to a single issue – the client is trying to find solutions to their problems instead of relying on the web designer.

Let me give you two examples. The most obvious occurs at the design stage. After seeing your design the client comes back with comments such as ‘make the logo bigger’. This is their solution to a problem that they have with the prominence of the branding. If they had expressed the problem instead of the solution, it would have enabled you to suggest alternate approaches. Instead of making the logo bigger, you could have possibly added more whitespace or changed its position.

Another less obvious, but more significant example, is in a client’s invitation to tender. These documents are inevitably a wish list of ideas that they have for the site. They are the client’s attempt to solve an underlying issue. For example, their problem might be a failure to engage with customers, therefore in their invitation to tender, they suggest adding a forum. Of course, in reality there are many other ways to engage with customers, however unless they express the problem to you, you will never have the opportunity to suggest a solution.

At the beginning of every project, encourage your client to focus on problems and not solutions. Whenever the client suggests a solution ask why. This will enable you to understand the underlying issues.

Unfortunately by the time we have been engaged as web designers, the scope of a project has already been set and it is hard to contribute ideas. This is because the way clients commission websites is fundamentally broken.

4. Sites should evolve

A typical website goes through a constant cycle of redesign. After its initial launch, it is left to slowly decay. The content becomes out of date, the design begins to look old fashioned and the technology becomes obsolete. Eventually staff stop referring customers to the site and it is perceived as a liability rather than an asset. In the end, senior management intervenes and assigns somebody to ‘sort out the website’. This inevitably leads to the site being replaced by a new version, and the cycle repeats itself.

This problem primarily occurs because there is no real ownership of the website within the organization. Often the client you deal with is only assigned to it for the duration of the project. Afterwards, the site is left to stagnate.

This cycle of redesign is wasteful for three reasons:

• It wastes money because the old site is replaced, and the investment put into it is lost.
• It is bad for cash flow, generating large expenditure every few years.
• For the majority of its life, the site is out of date and not being used to its full potential.

We need to start encouraging our clients to invest regularly in their websites. They need a permanent website manager and an ongoing relationship with their web design agency. Together they need to keep content up-to-date, improve the user interface and ensure that the technology keeps pace with change. Ultimately this is more cost effective than replacing the site every few years.

The ongoing management of content is an area that needs particular attention. Unfortunately it is often massively under resourced and generally neglected.

5. Content is king – Act like it!

I am constantly amazed at the difference between what clients says and what they do. Take, for example, content; most clients fully accept that content is king, yet few are willing to spend money on ensuring its quality. This is all the more absurd considering the amount they spend on implementing complex content management systems.

Most clients that I encounter feel that hiring a copywriter to ensure the quality and style of their content is unnecessary. Perhaps this is because they feel they are capable of writing copy themselves, however writing for the web is not like writing for any other medium. It presents some unique challenges that cannot be under estimated.

It is strange because clients are perfectly happy (well… maybe not quite ‘happy’) to pay for design. They realize that they cannot do the design without a professional designer, so why then do they believe that they can write good copy themselves?

Often when clients do write copy, it ends up being verbose and inaccessible. Stuffed with sales copy and jargon, which is largely ignored by most visitors to the site.

However, in many cases the reality is even worse than poorly written copy. In my experience, clients under estimate the time involved in producing copy for the web and resort to copying and pasting from a wide variety of offline printed material. This leads to Frankenstein copy, using a mix of styles that are often entirely inappropriate for the web.

It is our role as web designers to educate our clients about the importance of copywriting and explain the size of the task, if they choose to take it on themselves. Without previous experience most clients will significantly underestimate this task.

Conclusions

This is far from a comprehensive list. I have not mentioned success criteria, usability, accessibility, online marketing or subjective design. In fact I have hardly begun to touch on any of the things a website owner should know, however I do believe that if our clients were only to adopt the 5 points above, it would make a profound difference to the success of their website. Now it falls on you to persuade them.

Written exclusive for WDD by Paul Boag. He is the founder of UK Web design agency Headscape, author of the Website Owners Manual and host of award-winning Web design podcast Boagworld.com. He is also addicted to Twitter.

What challenges do you face when interacting with your clients? What do you do to improve this? Please share your opinion.

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!

You are usually so busy with current projects that answering calls from past customers can seem like an unnecessary and non-profitable chore.

Here is how you can plug back in to your client base and turn customer service into the profit center that you never thought it would be.

1. Ditch the “Pump and Dump” Model

Many of us tell ourselves that web design isn’t like other businesses. Therefore, we don’t have to behave as other business people do. We can design websites, get our final payment from the customer once the job is done and move on to the next client. This is completely wrong thinking. Web design is a service just like landscaping, legal representation or car repair. You are providing a service for money. While you may be in demand now, in a downturn you will only keep your business profitable if you provide outstanding service.  While you do need to devote a certain percentage of your time to finding new leads, you should devote the same amount of time each week to helping out your past clients.

2. Make Your Terms Clear

Most web design firms offer maintenance packages or charge for updates. While it is important to provide good customer service, you should spell out clearly what constitutes free customer service and what constitutes a paid request.

This is best handled in your initial contract with the customer. Many web designers don’t like to produce contracts as they are worried about scaring off the customer. On the contrary, the customer will often view such a move as a legitimate business transaction and a sign that you are a professional. Be very wary of any company that is not willing to sign a contract for whatever reason.

The contract should include a copy of your quote to your customer with a statement that anything over and above what is included in the quotation will be charged out separately. One-time charges for updates and maintenance packages should be on offer in the contract and on your website so that clients can refer back to these charges.

3. Deal With Emergencies

We’ve all gotten that strange call from a client declaring that something is an emergency and needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW, regardless of what that emergency is. While it may not be an emergency to you, your client perceives it as such and how quickly you deal with that emergency will reflect on your business. It may be helpful to explain to your client that something isn’t as bad as it seems after the fact, but don’t even go there unless you have fixed the issue at hand.

4. Treat Every Contact as an Opportunity

From simple questions about search engines to irate clients, each call is an opportunity for you to reach out and either educate or placate your client. One of the most common complaints about web design companies is their lack of responsiveness after the project is complete. All you need to do to combat this is answer your clients when they phone or e-mail you.

You can build on this by weaving sales techniques into your after-sales service. The key to doing this properly is to address the actual needs of your customer. When a customer calls you, ask them at the end of the call how everything is going and if there is anything more that you can do for them. This is when they’ll start telling you about a form they have been thinking of adding or a new technology that they want to try out. Leave it open-ended and let the customer talk. If they simply say “No.”, then thank them for their call and move on to your projects. At least one in ten of them will probably say “Yes” and give you more business.

E-mails are a tricky subject. One of the problems with e-mail is that we get so many of them in our business day that it is easy to let a customer request fall to the bottom of the pile. Flag customer requests or put them in their own folder for immediate answering so that this doesn’t happen to you. If an e-mail isn’t something that requires an e-mail reply, such as a customer asking for a link to something, pick up the phone and call them. You’ll have a much better chance of impressing the customer over the phone then you will over e-mail.

5. Identify and Cultivate “Angel” Customers

Develop an 80/20 list. It is a general rule that 20% of your clients are responsible for 80% of your income.  Once you have identified them, treat these clients as “angel” customers. You need to retain their loyalty in order to keep your business viable. This may mean taking each of them out to lunch a couple of times a year or bringing them to a lecture on search engine marketing at a local trade show. Whatever you do, make sure that you don’t just know their names, but can actually come close to calling them friends after a while.  While this concept may seem tacky, it is an old school way of doing business that most people still appreciate. Loyalty is earned by doing a good job first and forging a relationship second. If you don’t forge that relationship, your customer does not have the necessary loyalty to return to you for their website needs.

6. Turn The Rest of Your Customers Into “Angels”

Look at the remaining 80% on your list. Ideally, you would like to move them into the 20% column. You can do this by sending out educational e-mail newsletters, sending Christmas cards once a year and occasionally calling them to see if they need anything or have any questions for you. Treat these calls with the same importance as your sales calls – they will lead to just as much business. Consider having pens or other promotional items made with your logo and sending them to your customer, then following up with a phone call to make sure that they got them.

If you can find a way to incorporate at least a few of these customer service ideas into your everyday business, you’ll be making your clients happier and making a little more money in the process.

Written exclusively for WDD by Angela West.

Are you following these principles with good results? What other ways do you use to keep your customers coming back?

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!

Therefore, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the homepages of the Top 30 technology companies (the order of this list was determined by the InfoTech 100 from Business Week), and assign them a PASS or FAIL rating based on the quality of their homepage design.

Click on the screenshots to check out each website.

1. Amazon.com: PASS

Although it may be a little cluttered for my taste, it would be short-sighted to say that the Amazon.com homepage is a FAIL. Amazon has created a company that has landed at the top of the InfoTech 100, and the fact that one hundred percent of their sales are made online shows that they understand how to use their website to attract and retain customers.

2. Apple: PASS

As an Apple user, I may be a little biased, but I honestly don’t think that anyone could look at the Apple homepage and say that it fails in terms of design. The homepage is uncluttered, provides easy to use navigation and gracefully showcases several of Apple’s products.

3. Research in Motion (RIM): PASS

Let’s be honest; the RIM homepage is not going to win any awards for being innovative. However, while this may be true, the homepage does get the job done. Not only does it provide links to all of the relevant topics of interest, but it also showcases their latest product. If I was a school teacher, the RIM homepage would probably get a B- (while the Apple homepage would be at the top of the class with an A+).

4. Nintendo: FAIL

Okay, I already know that this is going to be a controversial one, but I have to give the Nintendo homepage a FAIL. While I do like the color scheme of this homepage, there are simply too many elements in the layout. Since it already looks like they are trying to replicate the Apple homepage, Nintendo needs to take another look and realize that they could benefit by cutting out about 75% of the homepage elements below the navigation bar.

5. Western Digital: PASS

This homepage falls into the same category as the RIM homepage. It’s definitely not pushing any envelopes, but at the same time, there’s nothing wrong with it. This is a corporate homepage we are talking about, and not only does the menu make navigating the website easy, but I like the fact that they use the main area of their homepage to promote a single product (instead of making Nintendo’s mistake and trying to cram as many products onto a single page as possible).

6. America Movil: FAIL

Although this isn’t technically their homepage (it’s the first page of their website, but you have to click “Enter Fullscreen” to visit their actual homepage), I do not appreciate a website that forces me to go into a fullscreen mode. Unless I’m watching a movie, I do not want a window to be in fullscreen. Not only it interrupts my flow of browsing, but it’s going to cause problems for people who don’t have a 1024×768 resolution.

7. China Mobile: PASS

First of all, kudos to China Mobile for having their website in multiple languages. While I think they could cut the size of their Press Releases area in half (and do a better job at emphasizing the “Hot Products” on the right side of the page), the China Mobile homepage successfully accomplishes the basic goals of a corporate homepage.

8. Nokia: PASS

I really like the fact that Nokia puts all of the necessary navigation elements (links and search box) at the top of the page, and then uses the main real estate of their hompeage to showcase their latest products (the large box actually scrolls through several different products). Additionally, they finish things off with a few other boxes that lead to destinations of potential interest (such as capitalizing on the new “Twilight” trend).

9. ASUSTeK Computer: FAIL

Although you can’t see it in the screenshot, there are simply too many moving elements on this homepage (including the left and middle columns). Unlike the main area of the Nokia homepage (which scrolls through several different elements), the main area of this homepage is animated, but it simply loops the same offer over and over. Additionally, there’s too much clutter on the homepage for a user to figure out what they actually want to do.

10. High Tech Computer (HTC): PASS

If I was going to pick my two favorite homepages out of the first ten companies on this list, Apple would be #1 and HTC would be #2. The homepage is relatively uncluttered, and (in addition to the navigation) simply displays four main elements (three of which are to popular products/offers).

11. Google: PASS

If you need proof that minimalist designs are more effective than cluttered ones, just compare the stock prices of Google and Yahoo. Google is a search company, and from the second that you visit their homepage, you know exactly what you are supposed to do with their website.

12. MTN Group: PASS

It’s definitely not my favorite homepage on this list, but it gets the job done. In addition to providing visitors with easy to find navigational links, MTN Group promotes all of the latest news that’s related to their company.

13. IBM: PASS

I actually have to admit that I was little surprised with the IBM homepage. Given the reputation of the company, I was expecting an extremely bland homepage, but theirs actually has a little flair. I also like the fact that each of the main navigation links is actually a drop-down menu, which makes it easier for users to find exactly what they want.

14. Mobile Telesystems: FAIL

I want to like this homepage. However, there is simply too much red in the design, which results in an overwhelming experience when the page loads. On top of that, Mobile Telesystems really needs to increase the size of their fonts for their navigational links.

15. Telefonica: FAIL

I don’t think I need to go into much detail about why this design is a fail. I guess that it’s a decent attempt at a design, but it simply doesn’t come together well. Telefonica’s needs to scrap this design and start over from scratch (it wouldn’t hurt them to get a little inspiration from some of the top homepages on this list).

16. VimpelCom: PASS

Like several of the other websites on this list, VimpelCom could benefit from increasing the size of their font. Also, I’m not sure why the paragraph under the “Brief Business Description” is one long hyperlink. However, those are both minor details, and I otherwise like the design of this homepage. I think their use of ample white space helps to bring attention to their main content.

17. Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Ind.): FAIL

Although I will give them credit for making it easy to switch their site between English and Traditional Chinese, this homepage just doesn’t do it for me. I think what really turns me off is the badly done header. If they could come up with a more attractive header and improve the link structure below the header, Foxconn might be able to move into the PASS category.

18. AT&T: PASS

Even though they have a lot on their homepage, AT&T is a company that offers a lot of different products and services, so I don’t think their homepage is overwhelming or too cluttered. Additionally, I also like that their main content area highlights several of their best offers.

19. Accenture: PASS

Not the most exciting homepage (although I do like the picture of Tiger), but like several of the other homepages on the list, it gets the job done. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but my one suggestion would be to increase the font size of the links on the right side of the page (I think a lot of designers underestimate the importance of having text that is large enough for people of all ages and monitor sizes to read).

20. LG Electronics: FAIL

I like this homepage. However, I have to give it a fail because even though I have a fast Internet connection, it takes this page forever to load. Not only do you have to wait to load the “Select Your Region” page, but then there’s another delay before the actual homepage loads!

21. Bharti: PASS

I think that the picture on this page is a pretty cool. I also like their one sentence mission statement about 2020. I would recommend formatting the description of their company differently, but other than that, this a pretty good corporate homepage.

22. Oracle: PASS

I like the use of white space, and unlike the Mobile Telesystems homepage, Oracle successfully uses red in their color scheme without going overboard. My only suggestion would be to move the bottom navigation (Customer Spotlight, News and Special Event) above the list of links, and to potentially prune down the total number of links in those four columns.

23. Microsoft: FAIL

As an Apple guy, I was hoping I would get to fail Microsoft. Although I remained objective, I’m glad that I get to give them a FAIL. The reason is because of the “Microsoft Silverlight” pop-up that automatically appears when their homepage loads. Just like America Movil forcing a full screen, I don’t want anything to pop-up while I’m browsing (especially when it forces me to click the Install link or the No Thanks link).

24. Maroc Telecom: FAIL

Since I’m not one of their target customers, I don’t mind the fact that I can’t read what’s on the homepage. However, I do have to FAIL this page because they are trying to cram too much into a small space. If they would actually take advantage of the full page and spread apart their layout, they might actually be able to earn a PASS.

25. Turkcell: PASS

As you have probably noticed, I really think that this general type of layout is one of the most effective for corporate homepages. It gives companies the ability to highlight the main elements of their company, and generally draws visitors deeper into the website.

26. LG Display: FAIL

This homepage suffers from the same problem as the Maroc Telecom homepage. Instead of spreading things out, they have crammed all of the elements of their layout into a small space. They don’t necessarily need to remove any of the elements from their homepage, but they do need to spread out the elements that are there.

27. NHN USA: PASS

I really like the bold header that is a part of this layout. It really grabs your attention, and the five links that are integrated into the header make navigation easy. I would suggest potentially changing the navigation links from grey to black, but other than that, this is a great looking homepage.

28. COSMOTE: FAIL

Like the Maroc Telecom homepage, this isn’t getting a FAIL for being in a different language. The reason that it’s receiving a fail is because it is way too cluttered. There are simply too many elements jammed into this layout. Additionally, I’m really not a big fan of how much they used bright green in this layout.

29. Millicom International Cellular: PASS

Especially when you consider the fact that this is a corporate homepage, the design is quite nice and bright. The navigation is easy to use, and the main area of the layout is divided well between information about the company, links to documents for investors and a couple elements with additional information.

30. HP: PASS

Not every website can get away with a black background, but the HP website pulls it off successfully. Their use of big images in the middle of the page seems like a really effective way to grab visitor’s attention and get them onto specific product pages.

I obviously know that not everyone is going to agree with my opinion on every website, so feel free to drop your thoughts in the comment area below…

Written excusively for WDD by Tyler Banfield of COPYmoz

Never Ending WordPress Business Bundle – only $14!