Preparing For Your Project
Thank you for trusting Dog Star to assist you with your project. We are so grateful…
…and super excited to be a part of this very important process!
In the upcoming weeks, we will collaborate and collect all of the elements needed to bring your brand to life! If you’ve never been involved with a website project… FULL DISCLOSURE: it can feel overwhelming. Fret not, friend! We are here to help every step of the way. Communication and organization will play a key role in our success.
Below you will learn more about the process, how to get started, and how to keep things streamlined. You will want to bookmark this page for reference as it contains useful links to items that you will want to download, forms to fill out and content guidelines. We thank you in advance for your attention and time in reading this page as it will help make the project go smoothly for everyone involved
LET’S GET STARTED!
QUESTIONNAIRES – The questionnaires below must be submitted to begin the project. These very targeted questions will help us develop marketing and design strategies that are in line with your vision and goals. For your convenience, you can fill them out online. If, at any time, you need Dog Star’s assistance in brainstorming or working out the answers, we’re here to help. Just let us know!
SITE CONTENT – Once the questionnaires are complete, we’ll need to gather all the pieces necessary to build your website. This will include all imagery, written content, logo artwork, and any other items such as form field data for custom forms, product info if the site is e-commerce, etc. If original photography is required, we’ve got an awesome photographer we can recommend. A shoot would need to be scheduled at this time.
ACCOUNT ACCESS – Some of the logins we’ll need: your domain registrar, current hosting provider, CRM or CMS, social media marketing and online profile accounts. If we’re migrating your hosting, we’ll need a list of current email addresses associated with your domain if it’s not being hosted by a 3rd party. For your convenience, we have created a template that includes the most common accounts used. Please feel free to add additional rows or remove anything that is not applicable. You can password protect this sheet upon submission to ensure your information stays secure.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR ACCOUNT LOGIN SHEET
FILE STORAGE AND SHARING – A folder will be created using DropBox unless you have another file sharing system set up and can provide access. DropBox is a secure file sharing, storage, & collaboration tool that will allow us to keep everything organized. If you need to create a DropBox Account, you can register for a FREE Basic account. You will receive 2GB worth of space which is more than enough to accommodate your files. When you have completed registration, you can download the app to your computer. It acts as a simple folder on your desktop that you can easily drag and drop files to. We’re always here to help if you need it!
Keep going! You’re almost there!
CONTENT GUIDELINES
LOGOS – Any logos used in the design should be provided to Dog Star in its original vector format (Adobe Illustrator). If this file is not available, we need a version that is good enough quality to work with. If you do not have a quality version of your logo, we can help you in recreating something similar or developing a new logo altogether. We will provide our recommendations.
IMAGES – Images are EVERYTHING when it comes to website design. Stock photography is always an option. Original photography adds a tremendous level of authenticity to your presence online. Depending on your industry or area of service, as well as your existing photo library, we may recommend our partner photographer. Should you need photography services, Dog Star will coordinate with your company and work with the photographer to get the perfect shots for your site.
We require that all images of landscape (horizontal) orientation are a minimum of 1920px wide. Images of portrait (vertical) orientation are a minimum of 1000px wide.
CONTENT SUBMISSIONS – All materials being collected for the site should be submitted in their final form. If Dog Star has to make revisions after images or text have already been inserted onto the website or other marketing materials, it may increase the number of hours required to complete the project and affect deadlines. No one likes $urpri$e$ so we do our best to minimize 🙂
CONTENT FILE SHARING AND STORAGE – All files (images and content) should be stored and intuitively organized within the shared folder. If written content is being provided, you can submit this in the form of an appropriately named text or Word Document. For example: Home Page Content, Employee Bios, etc. For photos: An appropriately named folder such as ‘Headshots’ or ‘Product Photos.’ Email inboxes are high traffic areas. If content is submitted via email, there is more room for error and the time required to manage the project increases. By utilizing the shared folder, we can ensure we are working from the same documents. If changes need to be made, it is easy for someone to access the necessary document to make updates, knowing it’s the single working copy.
TEAM PAGES/EMPLOYEES – For each employee we will need:
– Quality resolution headshot or other depending on your preference.
– Full name
– Title / Company Role
– Email address or preferred contact info. You can choose email and phone, phone only, email only or none but all info for each employee must be consistent.
– We can use links to social media profiles but they are not mandatory. LinkedIn is a popular choice for employees. Again, these just need to be consistent for each.
– A brief summary of each employee (if you choose). For employees on a standard team page, these summaries should be limited to 2 or 5 sentences. We can also create full bio pages if desired.
PLEASE NOTE: Websites look better when elements of the same nature are consistent and line up versus having uneven boxes or blocks of text. It adds to the esthetics. Each employee summary will need to contain a consistent character count for layout purposes. To achieve this, you can create a summary in Word and go to TOOLS>WORD COUNT. Note the CHARACTERS WITH SPACES number. When creating additional summaries, please ensure they are within at least a few characters of your original character count.