A few months back, we acknowledged the need to revamp our website. The existing design no longer mirrored our evolved product, and the messaging seemed detached from our current identity.
At TalentDesk.io, our two-member marketing team often leans on agencies. We rely on a digital marketing agency for our paid campaigns across platforms like Google and LinkedIn, and an SEO agency assists with our content and organic traffic. Being the VP of Marketing in a rapidly-growing company with a lean marketing team, I deeply appreciate these agencies for their versatility and support.
However, when it came to refreshing our website, we opted not to engage a Creative Agency. Here's why:
Once we settled on this direction, we began our freelancer hunt on our very own TalentMarket. We decided to put our money where our mouth is and make use of TalentMarket due to its highly curated selection of pre-vetted talent. Instead of sifting through millions of freelancers, TalentMarket allowed us to efficiently navigate through a pool of highly qualified professionals, each accompanied by ratings and reviews, providing insight into their expertise and reliability. This not only saved us precious time but also simplified our decision-making process. Having too much choice can often be overwhelming and counterproductive, but TalentMarket streamlined the selection, allowing us to focus on evaluating the best-suited candidate who could bring our new humorous branding ideas to life.
Let Gary Anderson Barber explain what he thought of the process of working with TalentDesk and his experience of being a freelancer.
I started employing people and ended up building up a small design agency. I had four or five people working for me and I did that for 15 or more years until I realized I wasn't really enjoying it. All I was doing was management and servicing clients and finance. I wasn't really doing what I was good at and what I enjoyed. So, basically I just downsized at that point.
Over the space of a few years I got back to just being on my own again. I disposed of the office I was working out of and went back to working from home. Essentially, the journey to being a freelancer was through that. It’s much, much better and much more enjoyable.
I feel like I've been a freelancer all my life, because apart from the first four years of working for somebody, I've essentially worked for myself from when I was probably 23 or 24. Even though I was kind of running a company and employing people, I still kind of felt like I was freelancing it essentially. It was only really when I started to work back on my own again, which is about six or seven years ago now, did I make the decision about becoming independent again from running a business and employing people. I guess it’s been seven years or so now of being a freelancer.
I’ve had a good experience so far. I think the platform's really easy to use. It's been super easy as far as logging my time, logging my hours and the approval of the work that I've been doing through to the super quick payment at the end of the month. So, that's fantastic from a freelancer's point of view because normally I have to chase people for money. Working with the platform makes it completely automated. It's very simple, smooth and hassle free.
I have a general process with any kind of web design. Initially you've got a discovery phase where you do a bit of research into the company, understanding what the product is, what their client does, their industry, the marketplace, competition etc. Researching is the first stage and from there it's obviously defining what I'm actually trying to achieve.
In this case it was a clear brief from you guys at TalentDesk explaining what it was that was needed as far as refreshing the brand and the website design. The goals were really to improve the design, improve the user flow, and make sure that the core tractions were clear.
So once that was done it was onto the actual design side which is again, looking for inspiration of other websites and seeing what the current trends are. I normally spend a bit of time looking at the existing website and from a user's point of view and trying to define what I like about it, what I don't like about it. From there, you get straight into the design. With a new web design, I would tend to probably do a site map etc. But again, that wasn't required because it was all existing and this project was more about improving the design aspect of what was already there.
We started a bit weirdly with the ‘About Us’ page. Normally, I'd start on a home page. It did take quite a few iterations before we really kind of got to where we were happy with it. It then led into defining what the rest of the site was going to be, what it was going to look like. The solutions pages then had a similar style and as the design sort of developed it defined a bit of a template style and how the graphics were going to appear. We introduced new stock images alongside the new elements. We also had the existing angles and semi-circle graphics that were on the existing website which I used and I incorporated them into some of the graphics and made them larger. This made the whole website look a bit bigger and bolder, a bit fresher. By the time we actually got on to doing the home page, which was quite some time afterwards, I think the the style had pretty much been set up by then and it was more about just working through the actual design sections of the different modules on each page, getting them looking right, and getting the messaging correct with the graphics.
From there it's kind of a hand over to the developer. There's a bit of work then at the end of the process of the design just to kind of get everything perfected.
Yeah, definitely. I think as the pages were designed, it became easier moving forward on to the next one. I think as we went through each page, there were less and less iterations each time that we created a new page. The hardest part was trying to fully understand how the Talent Desk app works because it is so encompassing. From onboarding, payments and task management etc. It took me a little while to grasp because TalentDesk does so much. However, the new website is definitely how I had it in my mind from when I started.
Absolutely. I'm really pleased with it. I think it came out really well and it's been a really good project to be involved in. I think the final result definitely is a nice step on from the previous site. It definitely looks more modern, it's more in keeping with the actual TalentDesk product.
Sometimes I only get to do maybe a home page and a few internal pages for a site and then I hand it over. Whereas in this case, I got to do pretty much every single page which is really nice so I could make sure everything was really consistent across the styling and graphics.
From the development side, it was really nice to work with Graham. It was good to understand some of the constraints that he had as we were going along and for him to adapt the design a little bit if needed so that the website came out as close to my original designs as possible. That does really help, having a good rapport with the developer. So yeah, I say I'm really pleased with it.
It's two different ways of working entirely. Working with a freelancer, you do get the direct access to them and you're not shielded by an account handler. It's nice to speak directly with a client rather than feeling like you're getting past second hand information. That's a major benefit from my point of view and from what I hear about from clients as well. People like to be able to speak directly with the person involved in the actual design process.
I guess working with a freelancer you are only working with one person, you're not working with a team of people so it may take a bit longer. Freelancers do tend to have a number of projects ongoing at any one time. But one of the other benefits would be from a budget point of view. An agency has larger overheads, more people, so they do have to charge more money. When you're working directly with somebody, all they have is their work from home computer and internet connection. Their cost is a lot lower. I think, from my point of view, you probably get just as good an end result.
I think that the direct access to a client is what makes it work so well, particularly with Zoom. Nowadays, people have just become used to working in that way. Previously, people didn't really want to work remotely, but now, everybody's happy to. I think you can get the benefit from being able to pick a freelancer who could be anywhere in the world and work with them directly, rather than having to use somebody local to you. I think that's a definite benefit for working with a freelancer.