Digital best practices protect us
When we follow digital best practices from the very beginning of a project, we benefit multiple ways. Here are some of the ways that best practices protect us:
Following best practices for creative (mobile first, etc) saves everyone time — we avoid endless rounds of changes to bring the piece in line with best practices and other rules.
Following digital best practices means we prevent the embarrassment of showing our clients work that can't be achieved as designed. I've seen this happen many times; very cringe-inducing! The client has approved the creative and then we have to go back to them and tell them we need to make necessary changes, due to certain tech restrictions, ADA requirements, etc. This can definitely make the client question whether they've hired a digitally-savvy agency.
Following digital best practices means we prevent the embarrassment of showing our clients work that they recognize as not following digital standards — it happens! A tech-savvy client may see right through work that's not done with a focus on engagement and success. For example, one thing you never want to hear a client say: "Why are we not looking at mobile first?"
When we follow usability (UX) best practices, our work tests well and performs well; this leads to more engagement and happy clients.
When we following guidelines for accessibility and ADA compliance we ensure that all users can easily engage with our materials — and of course this also protects our clients from lawsuits!
When we follow guidelines for search engine optimization (SEO), people can find and engage with our work more easily; this leads to more visits and happy clients. (All of this is sounding really obvious, right?) But was the creative team thinking about this from the beginning? Are they equipped with the knowledge of what makes a website SEO-friendly?
When we create websites and emails that load fast, we avoid a high bounce rate and (for websites) we improve our chances of a higher Google search ranking; this leads to more engagement and happy clients. But has anyone spoken to the creative team about what makes a website load quickly or slowly?
When we design with efficiency in mind, we end up with a piece that's faster and cheaper to program and QA, performs perfectly across platforms, and is more scalable for content updates. We save our client money and give them a piece that produces great results for them. Has anyone spoken to the creative team about what sorts of layouts are easy and cheap to program, versus overly complicated?
All of these benefits aren't things we can just slap on after the fact — we need to consider best practices as part of the plan for the piece, from the kickoff. These bits are just as important as creating amazing art and copy. They're all part of the puzzle. This is part of why all of us agency professionals, no matter what discipline we're in, should be familiar with (and enthusiastic about!) digital best practices before we start our work.
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.