When shopping for a new website designer (to re-design an existing website), what questions are important to ask? What makes some web designers more or less expensive? Is it appropriate to ask to have controls over some areas of the site to change content? What type do you suggest or is best for SEO strategies?
- business owner
Choosing a website designer is a big decision. Unless you plan on regularly doing a complete overhaul of your site, the choices you make today are going to be affecting your business for years to come. You’re on the right track with some of the questions you’re already thinking about.
The first point to consider is that there are actually two phases to building a website. The design phase is creating the user interface, layout, and general look-and-feel of your site. The programming phase involves creating the HTML+CSS, writing any Javascript, building a database, programming forms, and tying everything together into a cohesive site. You either need a single developer who can handle both phases, or a designer and programmer who can work together.
Factors Effecting Cost
While there are always going to be people who charge a lot more or a lot less then they are worth, in general you get what you pay for. From a web developer who charges more, you should be expecting…
- questions about your business, your customers, and what you want your website to accomplish
- engaging design that reflects your brand
- a well-defined process that lets you know what you need to provide and when (files, copy, etc.)
- clear answers to your questions about websites in general and your site specifically
- genuine interest in seeing your website help your business grow
Content Management Systems (CMS)
The short answer is you should definitely have content management in place. There are going to be times when you need to make simple changes to the information on your site. Don’t cross your fingers and hope the original developer is going to be available when you need to make changes right away. They might be swamped. With a good CMS, you’ll be able to change prices and dates, post announcements, upload photos, and even add or remove pages without needing to know a lick of HTML.
You also should be regularly adding new content to the site for SEO purposes (see below). Constantly shelling out money to your web developer to add a paragraph to your site doesn’t make sense. You’ll pay a little more for a CMS up front, but it will save you money in the long run.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Getting search traffic to your site is a very big topic. One small part of that is optimizing your site to be as search engine friendly as possible. SEO expert is a full-time job. So while your website programmer doesn’t need to (and probably won’t) know everything there is to know about SEO, they must have a basic understanding of the principles. A very basic touchstone is to ask if your potential developer uses table-based layouts. If they blow off the question as unimportant or (worse!) don’t know what you’re talking about, tread carefully. Also ask about search-engine friendly URLs. There’s much, much more involved in SEO, but those two questions will at least help you identify the true amateurs.
If search traffic is a big part of your strategy for your website, you’ll want to get an SEO specialist on your team. (And, yes, we do know a guy.)
Other Factors
What else should you be thinking about?
- portfolio – Check examples of other sites this designer has created. Do they match the level of quality you need?
- technical features – If you know your site has to have a shopping cart, online event registration, or some other feature make sure your programmer has the chops to pull it off
- testimonials – What are previous customers saying?
Another obvious but good tip is to check out the developer’s own site. While there are exceptions, in most cases it will reflect some of their best work. On that note, here’s a sneak peek at the new Silver Square home page that’s being developed right now:
