Mint

Howdy Do It came from “how do you do It,” the question Ellie & Margot found themselves asking about their freelance lifestyles, and so Howdy Do It was born, a weekly column about the things we do to keep ourselves organized, inspired and on track. Margot will be here on Mint each Monday, and Ellie will be over on Margot’s blog Pitch Design Union at the same time.

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Hold on to your hats Howdy Do It fans cause this is kind of a long post…

This was a huge week for me, after four months of work, I launched my first ever top-to-bottom website for POST 27. That’s a really big deal considering last summer I knew barely anything about web design. It’s been a long ordeal, but I’ve learned a TON along the way. And now that I’ve had a couple days to catch up with myself, here’s my take and a behind the scenes look at my process.

I never really thought I’d be a “Web Designer.” I didn’t learn any web in school, though at one point I had some self-taught Flash back in the day when everyone was building Flash websites. I just thought of myself as a print-only designer, plus I had a traditional full-time design job that didn’t require any web stuff. But ever since I got laid off and started freelancing I started wondering if it would be a good idea to start learning it again. So last summer when my Aunt offered to lend me money for a web course of my choice I agreed. I signed up for an 8-week CSS/HTML class figuring it would enable me to make simple websites & blog templates and would be another way to make money. But I never thought less than a year later I would be designing, developing, and art directing the production and marketing of a website with e-commerce. It stands as the biggest project of my freelance career so far.

I also thought I’d never really like doing web design or that I’d be much good at it. Lines of meaningless code that with the smallest typo can break an entire website? Ugh, that level of precision seemed nauseatingly impossible, might as well leave it to the nerds who are good at it right? Turns out I was both right and wrong about that. It’s as unyielding and perplexing as I assumed, but there’s also a high I found myself feeling when I actually got somewhere with it. And it’s surprisingly addicting. It’s a lot like long distance running in a sense, you kind of want to die at points but then you feel so amazing when you finish.

Also, web designers & developers are some of the kindest, most helpful people and are constantly helping each other out when possible, because everyone has been stuck on a website at some point and has gotten through it with the help of someone else. In my case, I owe huge thanks to Linsey Burritt, Noah Bernsohn, Chad Kouri, Scott Thomas and Matt Hooks for donating their time to helping me on this site.

Other things I’ve learned and will use the next time I’m developing a site:

- It’s really hard to choose a launch date, because you’ll never feel like you can get enough done in time.

- Web design is a lot of trial-and-error, educated guesses, and dealing with unknowns, so exact hours spent are impossible to define in advance.

- A To Do list of 5 items long could take you 5 hours or 5 days. Eventually you just have to draw a line somewhere and launch as much as you can.

- It is plain more expensive to build & launch a website and clients should to have the budgets & timelines to reflect that.

- Having a niche skill set like web design + LOTS of demand for web designers = more projects and higher hourly rate.

- Even experienced web designers will spend a good 3-6 months on design & development of a website.

- Don’t try to be designing, writing, or creating new content the night before launch. You won’t sleep.

- There is a lot of hate towards Internet Explorer, but is it clearly not enough because roughly 35% of internet users still use it. I cannot wait for the day when enough people finally makes the switch to one of the other better browsers, or when Microsoft finally makes IE less buggy, less prone to viruses, and more compatible with the web standards other browsers use.

- Supporting older versions of IE is more expensive for businesses, because it takes more time & man power to make any website run properly on it.

- Designing email blasts is more tricky than designing websites, expect at least 1 to 2 days test & to de-bug.

- There will be bugs. It’s okay. They get fixed eventually.

Even though I’ve spent the last few month immersed in web work, I still consider myself a newbie. I’d thrilled with any suggestions, tips, good resources if you know any, send ‘em my way! And if you’ve made it this far, thank you! And can I get a huuuuuge sigh of relief too, eh? Soooo nice to be done up on something so big, phew!

We touched on this last week but in case you missed it—Ellie and I have set up a Howdy Do It formspring account so that you can ask us questions (anonymously or not) and we’ll answer them as best we can. Originally we thought we’d answer questions in our posts, but a week can be a long time to wait, and it kind of defeats the conversation atmosphere formspring allows. So, hop on over and ask away!

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Click to read Ellie’s Howdy Do It post on home office organization.