7 vital questions to ask your web designer

Michael Estrin
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Websites Posted on September 30, 2009

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Eliminating the guesswork

Whether you work in the marketing department of a Fortune 500 brand or you're the one-man band responsible for getting the word out about your business, you're going to face a similar dilemma when it comes to building your next website. With a seemingly endless stream of jargon, prices that aren't always easy to compare across vendors, and the sinking feeling that today's plans will be out of date by the time they reach execution, it's easy to throw up your hands and run screaming out of the room.

But even if you have only a superficial knowledge of building a website, it is possible to get quality work on budget and on time. You just have to know how to speak with your vendor, whether that firm is a small design shop, a larger ad agency, or an in-house team responsible for building websites.

Here's what some top designers told us about the kinds of questions to ask and the kinds of answers to look for.

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Samuel Beavan September 26, 2010 at 5:33 AM

http://www.onevisiontv.co.uk

Samuel Beavan September 26, 2010 at 5:31 AM

Great article but nothing mentioned about seo practice. One of the things that can get forgotten is the importance of creating an xml sitemap, submitting this to Google, creating optimissed URL's and header tags. It's not a given that the design agency will include this as part of the service as I found out.

Sean Breslin October 13, 2009 at 9:21 AM

Good article! One thing I would add is make sure You buy the domain name and not the design company!
A small point but important. If you did fire them and had to start again, You own the basic building block the domain name.

Peter Nelson October 1, 2009 at 9:48 AM

Some other points I'd add to Michael's fine article.

1. Understand how testing will occur.
Ideally you want to hear the technical guys talk about "test driven development" or a very mature testing methodology. You also want to hear explicit statements about testing on "all" browser platforms (you can define what "all" should be).

2. Don't slough off administrative processes
I've seen time and time again that organization's that don't think about the medium term administration of the application. The organization ends up becoming less and less efficient as they cobble together processes that are inefficient. If you have any kind of e-commerce spend lots and lots of time hammering out all of those flows. Don't forget the nasty use cases of abandonded shopping carts, refunds, complaint resolutions, etc.. These are not necessarily the "sexiest" of things to work on, but they have a major impact on the customer experience and they also have a major internal impact on your overall efficiencies.

3. "Documentation"
Obviously we don't create lots of "pulp-based media" these days, but even so, the process is the same. Think about how best to support your web site visitors with tutorials, videos, PDFs, or PPTs. Here again, if you don't plan for this your organization will be scrambling to support the users reactively and this will give a bad impression to the users and it will put unnecessary stress on your in-house team.

Thanks Michael for a great article!

Michael Estrin September 30, 2009 at 1:19 PM

Thanks everyone. And Ken, I agree good open source software with great developers is a wonderful thing.

Bill Ferrara Sr. September 30, 2009 at 1:02 PM

Great article, Thank You.
Anyone working with a web designer should read this before the first meeting.
Bill PappyFerrara

Ken Mocabee September 30, 2009 at 10:30 AM

Excellent article, and spot on. The only thing I would add is that good open-source software that is implemented and managed by competent developers with good technical skills can be a tremendous cost savings. Where we see some web developers get in trouble is when they get in over their heads with an open-source system that looks great but they don't have experience with it, and when implemented it has problems or deficiencies that can't be addressed. The key is to make sure that you truly understand the open-source products you bring to the table, and that they can meet the client's needs and expectations. It is also critical that the developer has a good strategy for security updates and customizations when needed.