Questions to ask your web designer or service provider

General Questions

These are some of the questions you should ask your web designer before hiring them to ensure that you receive the best possible result.  The objective of this exercise to get a level of confidence that what you think you are buying is the same as what they are selling and will be the same product or service that will be delivered.

(By the way, most of these are good questions to ask any supplier or service provider with whom you want to do business). 

Can I see your portfolio?

Check to see that they have done work in the past similar to what you are looking for.

Check with the website owners what they thought of the Web Designer and if they had a good experience.

Ask the website owner if the Designer met their objectives for the site.

Make sure that there is a good range of sites and technologies used.

How much experience do you have?

Delivering a good working website that ranks well for given search terms and that converts visitors into customers requires knowledge in multiple disciplines. These disciplines include design, coding, copywriting, and search engine optimisation among other things. Very few people are experts in all areas. Each discipline brings something different to the final website. When you ask a web design company about their experience you should expect multiple answers – one for each discipline because the experience will be held by different people.

Do you outsource work to other contractors?

If they do, why? All web companies outsource some work at some time. If they outsource because of workload that is ok as long as the quality control is still in house. If they outsource because of specialised skills, then that is also ok. If they outsource all of their work and only have Sales & Marketing in-house then why don’t you do business with their outsource partners and cut out the middle-man?

Do you have a contract or agreement?

Having a contract or agreement will protect both the Web Designer and the Client. Always read the small print.

Among other things, the contract or agreement should also include a list of responsibilities ie who is responsible for content generation, who is responsible for maintenance, who is responsible for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

An important part of the contact is ownership. Who owns the domain, the design, the graphic, the code, and so on? If you do not own the website then you may find it difficult to walk away from that supplier with your web site.

Do you do anything else or is this your full time job?

If you are dealing with a company then it is understandable if they have related and complimentary products or services. If it is an individual or freelancer, then be sure that the project will be finished and that you have some point of contact if things go wrong.

What is your physical address? How big are you?

All companies need to have a brick & mortar location and be traceable.

Many web design companies are now international and can easily satisfy your requirements without having a face-to-face meeting. Communication is done through phone, email, web chat etc

Doing business with a bigger company is not necessarily going to give you better service. Often, smaller companies will be more responsive to your needs. That said, a larger company will have more people employed and thus will have a greater pool of designers and developers to call upon.

Can I speak to past clients?

All reputable companies will let you speak to past clients – do so. Find out the previous client’s experiences.

How do you price projects, and can you give me an itemised proposal?

If the company has standard prices or a published pricelist then go with it. The purpose here is to avoid hidden extras and also to avoid “surprises” later on.

Know up front all the costs, one time costs, recurring costs, and costs for additional extras ie what is the full cost of ownership?

A static web site (brochure site) will be cheaper than a dynamic site that has more built-in functionality and content management. The two sites may look and feel exactly the same but the static site will be harder to maintain and to enhance. The short term savings in a static site are offset by the costs involved in maintaining the site and in extending the functionality. If your site will be short-term and does not need changes then go with a static site. If want a site for the long term and be able to maintain, enhance and extend the site over time then go with a dynamic site.

When my site is live, what additional or extra costs should I expect?

Generally, ongoing costs are related to a) a support or maintenance agreement, b) hosting fees, c) renewal fees for your domain, d) other work that has been pre-agreed.

Just because you have retained one company to develop your website does not mean that you have to stay with them for maintenance or hosting. Also, you can have one company responsible for design, and another company advising you on SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.

When comparing costs across multiple suppliers it is important to compare overall cost of ownership over one or two years

Do I have to pay for initial meetings with you to gather requirements and for the initial quote?

Unless the project is large and there are a number of unknown areas involved, the initial requirements and quote should be free.

If requirements gathering is a project in itself then it should be costed separately up front with the option to walk away once completed

What does your design & development process look like?

A good web design company has standards and a methodology for planning and developing websites within a project framework. With standards, costs and timelines can spiral out of control. Also, standards will include testing and quality reviews (coding, usability, design, navigation, SEO, etc).

What does support look like and how will changes be made to my site?

Support comes in at least 3 different flavours a) built-in, b) paid support agreement, and c) pay as you go.

A busy company will keep track of your support requests with a support or ticket system. This ensures that no requests are lost and that all requests are acted on and resolved in a timely fashion

With regards to making changes to your website, if you want to do this then either you will need the relevant technical skills or else the web design company will need to build in some sort of content management into the site so that you can make changes without recourse to calling them every time you need a small change.

Making changes to a site represents one of the main hidden costs if this isn’t agreed upfront and provision made for content management.

Who is responsible for generating content and ensuring that it is of the best possible quality?

Navigating through this area can make or break a website. Technically, you can have the best website in the world but if the content is not good then the site will fail.

The ideal situation is where you generate your own unique content (because you know your customers and your product/services best) and have the web design company validate the content to ensure that it is on-topic and relevant to the actual webpage. Also, If the design company is doing on-page SEO for you then they will be responsible for taking your content as a base and using it to generate optimised content which is a) user friendly, b) will lead to good conversion rates from visitor to customer, and c) search engine friendly.

If the web company is generating the content (copywriting) then be prepared to pay for good content. When it comes to good copy, generally you get what you pay for. If you pay cheap then you will at best get terrible copy and at worst get duplicate content. Duplicate content is content that belongs to someone else and may be subject to copyright laws. The search engines will tend to ignore your site if your content is duplicated from someone else’s site.

Less than ideal situations occur when:

You generate all content and it is not validated to ensure that it is on-topic or in a web-friendly format. Writing for the web is different than writing a brochure or other sales literature since most surfers scan what is written rather than read everything that they see

The web design company takes on the task of writing the content for you and doesn’t use experienced copywriters. There are multiple disciplines required to develop a great site. An expert designer is not necessarily also an expert copywriter or technically proficient, and usually, is not an SEO specialist. A good web design company will have multiple people specialising is different skills.

What help, if any, will you provide to enure that my site will be indexed with the search engines and that it will rank well?

Getting your site index by a search engines should be free and included. “Submitting a site” only means letting the search engines know your site exists. Getting your site ranking well for given search terms is different.

Full SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a project in itself and may be expensive initially when done correctly. The result of this is a site that ranks well for given search terms (keywords). An SEO project will include keyword research, competitor research, on-page optimisation, and off-page optimisation among other things. The time need to get a site ranking on page #1 of Google for a competitive search term could take between 6 and 12 months. Not every site needs all of this but a minimum of on-page SEO should be considered with every web-site.

Without some SEO, it will be pot-luck whether your site ranks well or not. This means that when a visitor searches for “blue widgets” will your site rank on page #1, page #10, or page #100. If it ranks on page #100 then no one will be able to find your site.

Be aware that there are no quick fixes and no such thing as proprietary, secret methods, or special relationships with Google. Search Engine Optimisation can be time consuming and labour intensive. If you are promised or guaranteed page #1 ranking within a very short timeframe then be suspicious. The exception to this is Search Engine Marketing to get paid ads on the first page of Google in the paid ads area of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

There are unethical SEO practices that can get you high rankings in the short term. Once this is discovered, do not be surprised is your site is banned by the search engines and you suddenly find your site ranking at position #1,000. When employing someone to do SEO for your site they should always adhere to Google guidelines and best practices.

Can I make my own changes to the website after it has gone live?

The short answer should always be yes. The long answer is “it depends”.

If the site is developed with a Content Management Functionality then there is no issue. This could be something like Joomla or Wordpress which are free, or Adobe Contribute which requires a License. Developing a site with a built-in CMS may cost more money initially but will be cheaper in the long run because you will not have to rely on someone else to maintain your site.

If your site does not contain a Content Management System (CMS) then either you will need to have access to someone who can program or you will have to rely on the web design company.

If you are going to have the web designer make changes for you after the site has gone live then check out the costs beforehand. Are changes included in the support contract? How many changes can I request? What type of changes can I request? How much his your hourly rate for changes?

If you do your own changes to your website then be sure to find who is responsible for backups. Going back to a previous version of the site when you do not have a backup will lead to disaster or expensive fixes.

What other services do you offer?

Typical additional services may include Logo and Corporate Identity design, Photo Editing, Sales & Marketing materials, and Search Engine Marketing.

Once my website is live, that’s it isn’t it?

No, someone needs to be responsible for ongoing maintenance of the site. If no one does this then your site will become outdated or stagnant, and your rankings will deteriorate over time.

Some of the tasks involved in ongoing maintenance include the following:

• Make small changes (phone numbers, email addresses, news, changing prices, and contact information)

• Adding new content for new products or services that you offer

• Regular backups

• Monitoring the site to make it is up all the time and interacting with the hosting provider

• Hosting and domain renewals

• Ongoing Search Engine Optimisation so that you keep and improve your rankings

• Revamping your website. Think of your website as a shop display window. Would you keep the same display year after year or would you freshen it up?

• Monitoring traffic analytics and trends. Who is visiting your site? What content is most/least used on the site? How are visitors finding you? Do they stay for long? Are visitors converting to customers? Is my site working or not?

What questions do you have for us?

If a web design company does not ask you questions then be suspicious. Among the most important are related to the objectives you have for your site and how they fit in with your overall goals as well as detailed questions about you customers.

A good website has a purpose which is defined by the objectives. Also, a good site is tailored to your customers.