Attention To Detail

Sometimes it’s in the little things. All of them give your project that extra polish and make your users go “Wow!” For a company dedicated to creating exact scale replicas in which detail is is key, they come off as slightly contradicting when you look at their eCommerce website.

This is a big ongoing project with a lot of content being put in. It’s ever growing and is by far our best web project the company has. To make it easier for us and the client to maintain their website, we’ve allowed them full administrative rights. On their own, they’ve created products and modified copy. Unfortunately, what they’ve done is a design nightmare.

We’ve been doing product photography for them. Creating stunning high-resolution shots of their cutaways in full detail. Their presentation is nothing short of beautiful. This is our attention to detail, showcasing the company’s own attention to detail. Now granted, each product set takes around an hour to photograph and and hour to Photoshop; all billable time. We get three models: a normal one, one with a squadron patch/ship crest, and one made of silver - instead of wood. We then create a couple variations to display: normal, double border mat, custom engraved placard, patch/crest, silver, and a close up/detail shot. All of these are uploaded to their associated product, creating a polished final product.

Lately the client has been taking care of their own pictures and advertisements. Power to them, but there are lines to draw between doing something yourself and letting a professional doing it. Their pictures are taken with a small point and shoot camera with forward flash creating extremely low quality and flat pictures. We have a studio with a backdrop, two external lights, and a DSLR that takes high quality pictures in RAW format. Here’s an example of the extreme differences and remarkable lack of respect for their own product and website:

They’ve also been wanting to advertise new products and specials. I gave them several options for placement and told them I could design something that fit the website and be aesthetically pleasing. Advertisements are meant to catch your eye. They decided to put their specials on the home page, in big bold centered letters that break the entire flow of the website. This is what you’d see from someone who uses Word to create flyers; no design standards or appeal.

I get they want to cut costs but at the expense of the professionalism of their website isn’t something a client should ever do. I’ll see about getting things corrected, pitching ideas so that both can save time and money yet still create something that properly fits.

Attention to detail.