Bespoke Vs Templates

We do everything custom made, because using templates doesn't fit in our workflow. We determine goals before actually designing, make wireframes, place call-to-actions in the wireframes and after that we grab Photoshop... So we simply can't use templates.

Sometimes we have clients with low budgets or sponsorships... We do use templates for those clients every now and them, but we usually end up changing the templates a lot

What is a "call-to-action", and how do you place one in a wireframe? I'm afraid it's at points like this that I feel my lack of formal education.

I would imagine he means making the jquery actions and binding them to wire frame dom elements? then fleshing them out with actual images/content later.

Thats the way I tend to do things too.

Oh, is that all? Seems like all I'm missing then is the terminology. That's just common sense. Make it work, then make it pretty

I did a bit of research, and apparently a "call to action" just boils down to what you want the user to do on that page, or that part of the page.

Call-to-actions are the actions you want visitors to perform on your webpage. It's the actions visitors have to perform to actually finish the goal of your website.

Example:
Visit our 'Webdesign' service on our website: http://www.sterc.nl/diensten/webdesign
You'll notice 3 big things (I hope):
- Top left button near the logo: "Zoekt versterking", which means we're actively looking for new employees. It links to a page with our vacancies. Our goal there is to let interested people contact me.
- Top right button (blue): "Afspraak maken" which is a 'contact us' button, to make it easy to make an appointment with us (=goal)
- The most import button on the webdesign page is the CTA (call to action) called 'Vraag direct offerte aan', which allowes the visitor to request an estimate for our service 'webdesign'.

These 3 things are the call-to-actions (CTA's) on that webpage.

Our strategy is (very simply put):
- Set up goals for the client
- Work out the goals in the wireframes, including CTA's
- Track all Goals in analytics to see if it performs
- Report results to client using the data from Google Analytics
[ed. note: nomark last edited this post 13 years, 10 months ago.]

Right! Like I said, make it work, then make it pretty, and get the user to do stuff.

I would have to say, though, that the vast majority of my admittedly low-end clients have to be shown the pretty stuff first. I suppose that's why I get away with using pre-made templates so much.

I think we've all seen this by now http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

It's a pity I deleted the email to a client I "fired"; he wanted a huge page-filling background picture of a cityscape (actually two images, one for day and one for night), with the content of the page in a semi-opaque overlay so that "the visitor can enjoy the beautiful picture". With a responsive template. With lots of Javascript slideshows and rotators.