The usual case used to be that a business owner would have to fork over a large sum of money to an expert web designer, leave the coding and programming to them and accept the end result. If the look and content of the website didn’t exactly match the vision of the client, well then that was just too bad, lest they acquiesce to paying more for changes to be made.

It was a time-consuming process, taking months on end, and usually included some irritation for both parties involved. Essentially, the client was beholden to the technical skills and services of the web designer and the web designer was bombarded with requests to make even the smallest and most tedious modifications to a website. Needless to say, in most cases it wasn’t the most efficient of collaborations.

Nowadays, though, we know that not only does the client usually demand more participation in the overall design and direction of their website, but that it’s actually in the best interest of the web designer to have the proper tools and platform to more readily meet their client expectations. Given the large number of our users who are on both ends of this dilemma, we at Artbees Themes sought out the advice of some of our most seasoned web designer users to find out just exactly how Jupiter WordPress theme can be a huge asset to a web designer in helping them to better serve today’s clients.

Can the Jupiter WordPress Theme Help You Meet Your Client Expectations?

To better understand the preferences, knowledge base and expectations of today’s clients, we brought in Tom Weinkle, founder of Vortex Communications based in Miami, Florida. With over 30 years of marketing, web design and branding experience, Tom was able to tell us from his own experience how the level of participation in the brainstorming and marketing process has changed and about the prominent role clients now expect to play in the website designing process.

Additionally Tom quickly pointed out five inherent benefits you as a web designer can bring to your client by working with the Jupiter WordPress Theme. Though before we get to that, we’d like for Tom to introduce himself and share a bit about his professional experience.

Thanks so much Tom for joining us today. Just to give our users a snapshot of your experiences in web design and marketing, could you tell us a bit about what Vortex Communications does?

Of course. Vortex Communications—we’ve been around since the mid-80s and started primarily as a graphic design firm doing primarily print work though when the internet came along and clients started to realize there were opportunities to take advantage of the web, create a website, do commerce and tell their stories, we quickly got into that. So we see ourselves as a full service design and branding agency—we help people tell stories and try to help them set themselves apart from other businesses.

Web design is very exciting because it’s a fluid kind of an activity, constantly changing and evolving and being able to do that productively and efficiently is really important to somebody like us. In this sector, time is critical in terms of getting things done, coming up with ideas, having a design to show the clients and developing concepts and producing so we’re always looking for ways to make our process more efficient and one of the cool things about Jupiter is that it allows you to really focus on the message instead of the program and I think that’s what’s really exciting about the product.

And have you worked with a specific sector or clients from across the board?

Yes, it’s across the board—we’ve always found that after twenty or so years, and over 13,000 different kinds of projects we had so many experiences in different sectors that the more we knew about different types of sectors, the more we’d be able to apply what we knew about one area to another type of client.

5 Ways Jupiter Allows You to Deliver Exceptional Service to Your Client

1. Empower Your Clients to Steer the Direction of Their Brand

Today’s entrepreneurs, business owners and creative professionals are at the frontlines of their marketing campaigns and want to be empowered with choices and capabilities. Involving your clients from beginning to end of the website-creation process will leave them with a valuable impression of your services and allow them to refresh and update their brand as they see fit.

Tom: “Nowadays I find that over 60% or more of our clients understand the concepts that need to be included in their sites—they want social media integrated in their sites, they want videos, they want editing ability and they want to know how to include reviews on their sites. That’s what Jupiter brings to the table—it’s literally drag and drop—it used to be a promise, but it’s really here now.

Now, not only are we doing this 360 review of what the client needs but they’re doing it themselves too! This industry has evolved so much to the point where now there are so many apps, cloud services and programs that give our clients more control and involvement in their web design process and it’s just more efficient.

That being said, for Vortex Communications, one of our bottom lines about being a responsible web design firm is that we insist on adding value for our clients so instead of making the web design process all magic and complicated to understand we eagerly encourage our clients to get involved with it.”

2. Spend Less Time on Programming and More Time with Your Client

Nothing will gratify your clients more than the feeling of their mission being heard and understood. Spending that extra time getting to know your client and the underlying story of their enterprise not only demonstrates your respect for their vision but gives you much more clarity when you begin to sketch out a design for their site.

Tom: “One aspect of all the templates you guys have is that it takes away that element of time figuring things out so instead of spending your creative energy figuring out programming, coding or playing with CSS to get something to look the right way, what you get to do is figure out and decide together how you want to present someone’s information to their audience. The other thing about themes is that building bootstrap and custom websites can add another 30% time and cost and really extend the project and raise the fee. Jupiter’s nice because it allows you and your client to hit the ground running.”

3. Engage Your Clients in the Brainstorming & Design Process

By showing your clients the potential possibilities for their website you can answer the questions they wouldn’t have even thought to ask and exceed even their own expectations for how to share their story. By showing your client concrete examples of different features and functions they can include in their website, you’ll get a better sense of what they want and decrease the chances of having to make major edits down the road.

It initiates a design conversation that helps us better specify what they want in their website and what they don’t. I really like to involve my clients in this process.

Tom: “What I do find sometimes is that you can show your clients an existing site or quickly mock something up to show them an idea of the difference between where they are and where they’re going to be so I think that’s another big strength Jupiter has with all of its preset templates and its range of flexibility.

I’ve been in a jam a few times where a client is desperate to see a mockup of their website and since there are so many templates in Jupiter, it’s easy for me to look up a sector that best fits that client, take some components, get some thoughts and bring a solution to them in a short amount of time. It’s not that the site is done but at least in this way I can initiate a design conversation that helps us better specify what they want in their website and what they don’t.

I really like to involve my clients in this process—they don’t sit with me through every step, but I find having a lot of clients look at a layout with me on Skype is a great way to involve them and it let’s them see what you’re doing and allows them to give you insight and feedback on their business in the moment rather than losing a few days in back and forth emails and PDFs. It’s a great way to work and really benefits everybody—my business and the clients. They get to see the direction of the site and not waste time.

Instead of me spending 30 minutes to an hour trying to draw a blueprint of a client’s website, I can get great ideas to structure particular parts of the page and get inspired to create
different designs.

Another thing I love about Jupiter is that service that you guys provide. I think I get a weekly email these days of new templates you’ve built. It’s not necessarily that I’m using those specific templates but what’s really cool for us is that in a few minutes I can look and see how people have put together rows and columns and assembled various widgets and features to arrange content. So instead of me spending 30 minutes to an hour trying to draw a blueprint of a client’s website, I can get great ideas to structure particular parts of the page and get inspired to create different designs.”

4. Dispel Your Client’s Biggest WordPress Fears

Empower your clients by destroying any preconceived notions that they don’t have the technical skills to edit their own website. By providing basic skills in editing and updating their own site, you will save both you and your client time editing and waiting for changes to be made to their site.

Tom: “Well, the interesting thing is that most people who don’t do web design every day are terrified they’re going to break something and I think that’s another powerful thing about Jupiter because it’s pretty difficult to completely mess up so that those specific customers are always relieved to see that they can play around in Jupiter, continue to learn how to work it and not risk any big technical malfunctions.

We have a client right now who wants to do repetitive tasks and modifications every week so it makes sense for us to spend the time to teach them so that they can make those edits and what’s even better is that with Jupiter you can create a template and save it so that in the future instead of doing it all over again, you just take the existing saved template and make a few tweaks.”

5. Help Yourself to Better Help Your Clients

Your clients want their websites up and marketing as soon as possible without compromising quality. Get one step closer to those deadlines by handing off tasks to fellow WordPress experts who you can trust to be as meticulous and creative as you are! Likewise, get quick responses for bugs or problems you may encounter to ensure a high-functioning website for your client.

Artbees Care gives us the option of buying their services to take some behind the curtains tasks off our plate. This helps us meet all of our deadlines to make sure our client’s sites are up and running as quickly as possible!

Tom: “Whenever I submit an Artbees Support ticket in, a simple question or problem, they get right back to me with an answer so I love it—I think the service that you guys provide is very good! And as a web design agency, if there’s a point at which we have too many client requests and impending deadlines, Artbees Care gives us the option of buying their services to take some behind the curtains tasks off our plate. This helps us meet all of our deadlines to make sure our client’s sites are up and running as quickly as possible! What’s better is that I feel comfortable having Artbees Care specialists go in there and do it which is a relief really.”

Grow Your Web Design Business by Cultivating Happy Clients

Tom in his 30 years of experience has witnessed the evolution of the web designing industry and, with that knowledge, has shared with us the different aspects of Jupiter that make it such a valuable asset for you to serve your client. By walking us through his approach to sketching out, designing and building websites for his customers, he has showed us exactly how to wield Jupiter’s capabilities to deliver not just a website, but a collaborative experience, that goes above and beyond your client expectations!