Searching for design

Do you commission design work? And if you do, what are you looking for in your creative suppliers? When searching for design, or more accurately, searching for a designer, sifting through the seemingly never-ending options must be overwhelming.

To then try and sound out if your choice is a good fit with your company’s ethos is almost certainly a challenge too far.

As a business owner I try to use my intuition when addressing the requests we’re given and then tailor the responses based on the kind of company we are dealing with – for example, corporate, retail or startup companies all require different approach and nuance.

Experience has given all sorts of insights over time, yet in truth, when it comes down to it, the best thing we can do is ‘be ourselves’ and trust that impression stands out from the crowd.

HOW DO PEOPLE LOOK FOR THINGS?

But imagine the ideal scenario – when a potential client has managed to find you, this question of how people search for things takes on a new dimension. At that point, finding exactly what you’re looking for is so key. This has been on mind this week because to address exactly this question, we’ve added the ability to look at our website and effectively ask it a question, or hunt for something very specific.

Why did we do this?

Well, needless to say I know our portfolio inside out and back to front, but for a potential client, it’s all new (and hopefully exciting) – so making it easy for them to find work that resonates, or is the right industry for them, is super important.

Anything that makes that process easier, or at very least that gives a quick answer is a good idea, even if it only results in a handful of new jobs a year.

So – with the feature live, now it’s a case of ‘go, search!‘ and seeing what happens next.

FILLING IN THE BLANKS

So having added this fancy search feature, excited, I went right in there and typed a request – ‘lawyer website’. We’re working on a big project for a law firm at the moment and ideally want to do more of that kind of work so it’s really important to consider that kind of target audience with the work we have online.

… and, nothing happened.

So I began to realise that maybe we needed to start ‘tagging’ our work so relevant projects or blog posts came up. But what if we didn’t have an exact fit for the request? I wouldn’t want the site to draw a blank. Could it be that another piece of work we’ve done is really relevant to the request all the same?

So I began to work backwards, thinking of relevant industries we might like to work with. I will choose some corporate examples… so,  investment firms, private equity businesses, niche law firms and started to add in these tags to our work with companies like Mansford, Montrose Capital or Longwall Ventures.

And you know what, it looks good. I think the end result works really nicely.

Searching for design: our results page

WHY NOT TRY SEARCHING FOR DESIGN ON OUR SITE?

We’re in a period of testing of the search facility at the moment so would love to hear from you if you can offer insights into how you search, or any experiences you had using the feature.

Even better, if you looked for something on our site and couldn’t find it, please drop me a line and we’ll fix it.

On the other hand, if you find something you like and want to hire us, even better!

Give me a call on 020 7351 4083.

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu