Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers and Developers
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
1. How Much Do You Charge for Web Design? Results-oriented Web design takes time and expertise to do right. So if you find that your Web design is cheap, it may be safe to assume that your designer will take as many shortcuts as possible. Note, when you ask your designer for a price quote, ask them to tell you what the quote entails. Set Up Pricing Questions
Do you have a standard, published way to estimate website projects? What is it? Can you give me a line item breakdown of your setup fee/initial development estimate? How much of the total price is for graphic design work? How much of the total price is for functionality (software) development (includes training)? How much of the total price is for content (preparation and loading)?
Ongoing Pricing Questions
Can you give me a breakdown of the total cost of ownership I will have the website? How much am I paying for hosting? How much am I paying for software licensing, maintenance, and support? Is is a flat fee or hourly? How much I am paying for ongoing content changes? Is is a flat fee or hourly?
2. Do you design websites for multiple browsers and versions of browsers, operating systems, connection speeds and screen resolutions? Important to know if a designer considers the different browsers, computers, computer speeds and monitor resolutions that people in your town use to view websites. 3. Can I see a portfolio of previous sites you have built. Or is there a demo of a site similar to what you will be building us? This will help you see if a designer tends to gravitate toward a certain flavor in their designs or if they are quite versatile. One is not necessarily better than the other. Sometimes, if you have a clear vision what you like your design to be, it could be better to go with someone who excels at the look and feel you are aiming for. Also demo sites allow you to get a feel of what you’ll bring home at the end of the day. More information is better than inadequate or no information. This always makes a job smoother and least stressful.
e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 1
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
Other Experience Questions:
Do you have a documented, repeatable process to plan and build websites? Give me a written overview of the process? Can you provide five website addresses of website you built like the one you are proposing to build for me? Can you provide five references from companies you have built website for? How will I report and track issues / trouble tickets? What are your office hours? How can I get issues resolved after hours? If you (the primary contact) decide to not do website development anymore, who will support my website?
4. Do you know how to design a website that follows Web accessibility and usability standards? Site examples of this work. Web (or handicapped) accessibility standards for Web development will assist anyone with vision or other disabilities to read and use your website’s resources. Usability standards assure that a website is structured in a way that will allow people to easily find and use information on your site. Although not required, incorporating these standards makes your information easily available to anyone who uses the site, as well as making it easier for search engines to crawl and index Web pages. 5. Do you create easy-to-use websites? A website with lots of personality may look beautiful, but if it causes your visitors to flee in frustration because they can’t find what they need, it’s a complete failure. However, a good results-oriented designer has a basic understanding of website usability. They know how Web visitors navigate websites and cater to them to help you achieve your goals (subscribers, leads, and sales). Note, while asking your prospective designer this question helps, you should visit their portfolio, too. If their previous work is easy-to-navigate, you should be set! 6. Do you create wireframes before designing the website? Website wireframes are visual representations of where the content on your site will be placed. Why are wireframes so important? Placement of items on your site has a lot more impact on your results than you may think. For example, a good results-oriented designer will know that placing your newsletter subscription box high up on the right column will increase your subscription rate better than if it was located at the bottom of the page. 7. Do you offer conversion and usability testing? If you want your website to live up to all it’s worth, you must optimize your pages for results. However, how do you know if your pages are doing everything they can to generate those results? Instead of making a guess, you create two different pages, and pit them against each other. The page that does the best should be continuously tested to ensure maximum conversion rates. How do you do this type of testing? It’s called split A/B or multivariate testing. Results-oriented designers should know all about it, so you should ask them if they offer this as a follow-up service.
e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 2
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
8. Will you analyze the website’s current traffic before making design decisions? Analyzing a site’s metrics, if done correctly, can help identify the current site’s strengths. For example, what if your blog has great visitor loyalty, but the rest of your site doesn’t? Or, what if one of your pages has a lower bounce rate, can anything be implemented elsewhere on your site? In summary, by looking at your site’s metrics, designers can arm themselves with information to better equip themselves to make better decisions. 9. How is your design going to help our organization meet our goals? Have a plan and goals and to ask your designer how they’ll help you achieve them. A results-oriented designer will help you come up with these goals, but if they don’t, here are some goals you should consider: All this said, sometimes the goals of a new website design or redesign are related to things that can’t be easily measured like increasing awareness of a brand, spreading a message, or increasing authority. However, if you are looking for measurable return on your investment, finding a designer that can help you get tangible results can be a very wise choice. 10. How quickly can you provide a first draft of the site and how long does a job like this normally take? A pretty standard question but important nonetheless if you are in a hurry or on a budget. The faster you need it, the more you pay. Also, it helps you prepare your own promotional schedule. Don’t take this literally if you’re fuzzy with what you want. That will stretch the project out longer when you change things as you go. Tighten up the vision for your site, discuss this with the designer. The more focused you are, the faster you’ll complete the site – and generally pay less. 11. What is your working procedure and how will you communicate your progress? Way too often designers and clients fall out because of the failure to communicate. And this can happen both ways. The client leaving everything up to the designer until it is finished and finds out that’s not what they want or the designer not communicating how much more work that ‘one little tweak’ the client asked for is going to take. Both parties should have a pre-determined check-in time throughout the project just to see if everyone is still on the same page as you progress. 12. How much support comes with this package deal? Designers usually build packages around an estimated number of hours, including some support. Do not expect to pay $500 and have people work indefinitely for you, answering questions or tweaking things here and there forever (like asking for a tweak one year down the road and expect it to be a freebie). You have to know that sometimes what looks like a small tweak to you takes hours of work in the background, to build up before that tweak you asked for can even be applied. A good designer will tell you up front if this will be a problem. This goes back to the scope of the project. Don’t be fuzzy. Be clear what you want. This way you will find working with your designer a whole lot more pleasant and you keep everything under budget. e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 3
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
13. What kind of after support do you offer? Sometimes you need more help. It could be immediately following the completion of the project or sometime after. Ask what kind of rates you’ll be getting. This again should be motivation for you to keep the scope of your project clear. 14. What is your normal procedure if the job does not turn out satisfactorily? When a job is fairly large, paying an up-front lump sum is not a good idea. Sometimes people just bail out on you despite your best efforts and research. Other times you may find you don’t really work well together. You don’t want to be paying full price for a design you don’t want. Hash these out before you start. One of the best ways to work this out is to agree on a payment plan. Percentage down to start work and additional payments upon reaching pre-agreed milestones. 15. What software or technology will you be using to build my site and will I be able to use and update it myself? HTML, CSS, Drupal, WordPress, MySQL, PHP, CGI, Ruby ? You want a designer to use software/technology to develop your website that is more in the main stream versus software that only 10 people in the world know how to work. You may not fully understand what all that alphabet soup means and can do, it is important to have a rough understanding what this designer and their team is capable of. Web design today is no longer about HTML and static web pages of the 90’s. There’s interactivity and connectivity. You can make a site be as simple as a brochure or as complicated as your own social network with paid memberships on the side. The more complicated a site is, generally, the more your needs gravitate toward a Web Developer than a designer, or someone who can actually program or hook up the more technical things in the back end. Developers usually have more technical skills like PHP, MySQL, CGI and Ruby on Rails. Designers generally are more on the artistic side, with graphic skills, strong HTML, CSS and even some Javascript. By asking them this, you’ll get a better feel whether they have the skills to build the site you have in mind. Sometimes you end up with someone who is good overall though that is rare, unless you are working with a team of people. 16. Does it cost extra for this software or does anything you recommend to build this site going to require additional license purchased? This is so crucial to your budget. When you ask this, you will know if the package includes everything or you’ll have to fork out licenses to third parties to get the job done. 17. How do you handle versioning of your software? Am I forced to take version upgrades? Do I have access to version upgrades?
e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 4
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
18. Is the website portable (i.e. can I move it off of your system)? Who can host the website? 19. Is the software/technology customizable (i.e. can I pay for custom modifications to the software)? 20. We would like the domain name administrator to be in our representative’s name and email. Can you arrange that? When a client wants to leave for another designer, they make the clients pay a transfer fee to release their domain. When a domain is not in your name and contact, no matter what you say, registrars are not going to hand it over to you. Insist this be in yours or a representative’s name and email address.
e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 5
1. How Much Do You Charge for Web Design? Results-oriented Web design takes time and expertise to do right. So if you find that your Web design is cheap, it may be safe to assume that your designer will take as many shortcuts as possible. Note, when you ask your designer for a price quote, ask them to tell you what the quote entails. Set Up Pricing Questions
Do you have a standard, published way to estimate website projects? What is it? Can you give me a line item breakdown of your setup fee/initial development estimate? How much of the total price is for graphic design work? How much of the total price is for functionality (software) development (includes training)? How much of the total price is for content (preparation and loading)?
Ongoing Pricing Questions
Can you give me a breakdown of the total cost of ownership I will have the website? How much am I paying for hosting? How much am I paying for software licensing, maintenance, and support? Is is a flat fee or hourly? How much I am paying for ongoing content changes? Is is a flat fee or hourly?
2. Do you design websites for multiple browsers and versions of browsers, operating systems, connection speeds and screen resolutions? Important to know if a designer considers the different browsers, computers, computer speeds and monitor resolutions that people in your town use to view websites. 3. Can I see a portfolio of previous sites you have built. Or is there a demo of a site similar to what you will be building us? This will help you see if a designer tends to gravitate toward a certain flavor in their designs or if they are quite versatile. One is not necessarily better than the other. Sometimes, if you have a clear vision what you like your design to be, it could be better to go with someone who excels at the look and feel you are aiming for. Also demo sites allow you to get a feel of what you’ll bring home at the end of the day. More information is better than inadequate or no information. This always makes a job smoother and least stressful.
e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 1
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
Other Experience Questions:
Do you have a documented, repeatable process to plan and build websites? Give me a written overview of the process? Can you provide five website addresses of website you built like the one you are proposing to build for me? Can you provide five references from companies you have built website for? How will I report and track issues / trouble tickets? What are your office hours? How can I get issues resolved after hours? If you (the primary contact) decide to not do website development anymore, who will support my website?
4. Do you know how to design a website that follows Web accessibility and usability standards? Site examples of this work. Web (or handicapped) accessibility standards for Web development will assist anyone with vision or other disabilities to read and use your website’s resources. Usability standards assure that a website is structured in a way that will allow people to easily find and use information on your site. Although not required, incorporating these standards makes your information easily available to anyone who uses the site, as well as making it easier for search engines to crawl and index Web pages. 5. Do you create easy-to-use websites? A website with lots of personality may look beautiful, but if it causes your visitors to flee in frustration because they can’t find what they need, it’s a complete failure. However, a good results-oriented designer has a basic understanding of website usability. They know how Web visitors navigate websites and cater to them to help you achieve your goals (subscribers, leads, and sales). Note, while asking your prospective designer this question helps, you should visit their portfolio, too. If their previous work is easy-to-navigate, you should be set! 6. Do you create wireframes before designing the website? Website wireframes are visual representations of where the content on your site will be placed. Why are wireframes so important? Placement of items on your site has a lot more impact on your results than you may think. For example, a good results-oriented designer will know that placing your newsletter subscription box high up on the right column will increase your subscription rate better than if it was located at the bottom of the page. 7. Do you offer conversion and usability testing? If you want your website to live up to all it’s worth, you must optimize your pages for results. However, how do you know if your pages are doing everything they can to generate those results? Instead of making a guess, you create two different pages, and pit them against each other. The page that does the best should be continuously tested to ensure maximum conversion rates. How do you do this type of testing? It’s called split A/B or multivariate testing. Results-oriented designers should know all about it, so you should ask them if they offer this as a follow-up service.
e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 2
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
8. Will you analyze the website’s current traffic before making design decisions? Analyzing a site’s metrics, if done correctly, can help identify the current site’s strengths. For example, what if your blog has great visitor loyalty, but the rest of your site doesn’t? Or, what if one of your pages has a lower bounce rate, can anything be implemented elsewhere on your site? In summary, by looking at your site’s metrics, designers can arm themselves with information to better equip themselves to make better decisions. 9. How is your design going to help our organization meet our goals? Have a plan and goals and to ask your designer how they’ll help you achieve them. A results-oriented designer will help you come up with these goals, but if they don’t, here are some goals you should consider: All this said, sometimes the goals of a new website design or redesign are related to things that can’t be easily measured like increasing awareness of a brand, spreading a message, or increasing authority. However, if you are looking for measurable return on your investment, finding a designer that can help you get tangible results can be a very wise choice. 10. How quickly can you provide a first draft of the site and how long does a job like this normally take? A pretty standard question but important nonetheless if you are in a hurry or on a budget. The faster you need it, the more you pay. Also, it helps you prepare your own promotional schedule. Don’t take this literally if you’re fuzzy with what you want. That will stretch the project out longer when you change things as you go. Tighten up the vision for your site, discuss this with the designer. The more focused you are, the faster you’ll complete the site – and generally pay less. 11. What is your working procedure and how will you communicate your progress? Way too often designers and clients fall out because of the failure to communicate. And this can happen both ways. The client leaving everything up to the designer until it is finished and finds out that’s not what they want or the designer not communicating how much more work that ‘one little tweak’ the client asked for is going to take. Both parties should have a pre-determined check-in time throughout the project just to see if everyone is still on the same page as you progress. 12. How much support comes with this package deal? Designers usually build packages around an estimated number of hours, including some support. Do not expect to pay $500 and have people work indefinitely for you, answering questions or tweaking things here and there forever (like asking for a tweak one year down the road and expect it to be a freebie). You have to know that sometimes what looks like a small tweak to you takes hours of work in the background, to build up before that tweak you asked for can even be applied. A good designer will tell you up front if this will be a problem. This goes back to the scope of the project. Don’t be fuzzy. Be clear what you want. This way you will find working with your designer a whole lot more pleasant and you keep everything under budget. e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 3
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
13. What kind of after support do you offer? Sometimes you need more help. It could be immediately following the completion of the project or sometime after. Ask what kind of rates you’ll be getting. This again should be motivation for you to keep the scope of your project clear. 14. What is your normal procedure if the job does not turn out satisfactorily? When a job is fairly large, paying an up-front lump sum is not a good idea. Sometimes people just bail out on you despite your best efforts and research. Other times you may find you don’t really work well together. You don’t want to be paying full price for a design you don’t want. Hash these out before you start. One of the best ways to work this out is to agree on a payment plan. Percentage down to start work and additional payments upon reaching pre-agreed milestones. 15. What software or technology will you be using to build my site and will I be able to use and update it myself? HTML, CSS, Drupal, WordPress, MySQL, PHP, CGI, Ruby ? You want a designer to use software/technology to develop your website that is more in the main stream versus software that only 10 people in the world know how to work. You may not fully understand what all that alphabet soup means and can do, it is important to have a rough understanding what this designer and their team is capable of. Web design today is no longer about HTML and static web pages of the 90’s. There’s interactivity and connectivity. You can make a site be as simple as a brochure or as complicated as your own social network with paid memberships on the side. The more complicated a site is, generally, the more your needs gravitate toward a Web Developer than a designer, or someone who can actually program or hook up the more technical things in the back end. Developers usually have more technical skills like PHP, MySQL, CGI and Ruby on Rails. Designers generally are more on the artistic side, with graphic skills, strong HTML, CSS and even some Javascript. By asking them this, you’ll get a better feel whether they have the skills to build the site you have in mind. Sometimes you end up with someone who is good overall though that is rare, unless you are working with a team of people. 16. Does it cost extra for this software or does anything you recommend to build this site going to require additional license purchased? This is so crucial to your budget. When you ask this, you will know if the package includes everything or you’ll have to fork out licenses to third parties to get the job done. 17. How do you handle versioning of your software? Am I forced to take version upgrades? Do I have access to version upgrades?
e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 4
Questions to Ask Potential Web Designers/Developers
18. Is the website portable (i.e. can I move it off of your system)? Who can host the website? 19. Is the software/technology customizable (i.e. can I pay for custom modifications to the software)? 20. We would like the domain name administrator to be in our representative’s name and email. Can you arrange that? When a client wants to leave for another designer, they make the clients pay a transfer fee to release their domain. When a domain is not in your name and contact, no matter what you say, registrars are not going to hand it over to you. Insist this be in yours or a representative’s name and email address.
e-Vermont Community Broadband Project | www.e4vt.org | Facebook.com/e4vt.org | Twitter: @evermont
Page 5
