In this digital world, your website will likely be one of the first and best impressions you can make on potential clients. Web “people” go by various names: web designer, webmaster, web developer, digital marketer, SEO guy, SEO agency, content marketing agency, etc. Because of their technical prowess, they have an uncanny ability to speak a different language.
Before you dedicate your time, energy, and hard-earned dollars toward the perfect website, here are ten questions you need to ask and potential answers for them:
Top 10 Things to Ask Web Designer, Developer, or Agency Before Hiring Them
1. What Is Your Design Process and Typical Timeline?
It is always good to have a plan before you start. Therefore, asking a web design agency for a time plan and time frame should be a no-brainer.
Therefore, the time it takes to design and develop a small business website can vary greatly depending on its complexity and available resources (text, images, video, etc.). However, typically you are looking at anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks. But here are some of the major factors that can impact the timeline:
Scope of the Project: A brochure-style style website with just a few pages and basic functionality will take less time to design and develop than a more complex site with multiple pages and content marketing integration.
Number of Stakeholders: If multiple stakeholders, also known as a “committee,” need to review and approve design and development decisions, it can take longer to get approval and move forward with the project.
As Smashing Magazine describes, design by group work, also known as the business world’s “committee,” ultimately leads to compromise, which leads to bland, boring, disjointed designs.
“Design is subjective. The way we respond to a design can be influenced by culture, gender, age, childhood experience and even physical conditions (such as color blindness). What one person considers great design could be hated by another. This is why it is so important that design decisions be informed by user testing rather than personal experience. Unfortunately, this approach is rarely taken when a committee is involved in design decisions.”
Availability of Resources: If the agency you hire has a dedicated designer and developer working on your project, it will likely take less time than if you hire your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
Cube Creative’s Answer
When I am asked this, it will depend on the workload we have at the time. On average, it usually takes 6-8 weeks, but I have seen it happen as quickly as a couple of weeks to a year or more in fringe cases.
2. Can You Provide Examples of Your Past Work and Clients?
Any web designer, developer, or agency worth his/her salt will have an online portfolio with references. Looking through these examples, look for things that show their experience in areas your business needs. If you’re looking to build an online shop, look for sites with e-commerce capabilities. If you’re looking for an online portfolio, be sure they’ve done that kind of work before.
3. Who Is Doing the Work, and Who Is My Contact Person?
If you’re hiring a freelancer, this will likely be the same person. If you’re hiring a web design agency, you may have a leading source of contact that isn’t directly handling your website build.
There are pros and cons to each:
Freelancers: With them, you’re likely to get a faster turnaround time on answers to your questions, but you’re also more likely to get the technical jargon that could get confusing.
Digital Marketing Agency: With these, your contact person can translate the designer's and developer's jargon into meaningful information. It just may take an extra few hours or a day to get a response to your questions, mainly depending on the size of the agency.
Cube Creative’s Answer
We typically try to have an answer within one business day, if not immediately.
4. How Do You Ensure the Website Is User-friendly and Responsive?
To ensure that a website is user-friendly and responsive, several steps can be taken:
- Test the website on multiple devices: It is important to test it on different devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones, to ensure that it is responsive and looks good on all screen sizes
- Use clear and concise content: Keep the content on the website easy to read and understand, and use headings and subheadings to break up large blocks of text.
- Use easy-to-use navigation: Make it easy for users to find their way around the website using straightforward and intuitive navigation.
- Use responsive design: Use responsive design techniques to ensure that the website adjusts to the size of the device it is being viewed on.
- Use clear and easy-to-use buttons and forms: Make it easy for users to interact with the website by using clear and easy-to-use buttons and forms.
- Use relevant and high-quality images: Use relevant and high-quality images that help convey the website's message.
- Use appropriate font sizes and colors: Use appropriate font sizes and colors to ensure the website is easy to read and navigate.
- Use alt tags for images: Use alt tags for images to ensure that users using screen readers can still access the content on the website.
- Think about web accessibility guidelines: A good agency will take web accessibility guidelines into account when designing and developing your website, including:
- Clear and descriptive headings
- Alt text for images
- Semantic HTML tags to structure the content
- Color contrast for text
- Check colors against color blindness standards.
- Check the site against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
5. What About Content?
Some freelancers and agencies require the client to develop the content, whereas some will do it for you. If you can create your content, then that is great. However, I have found that most clients either don’t want to or don’t have the time to generate the content. Asking you to do that adds friction to the process and ultimately delays the project. Therefore, all I ask for is a bulleted list of information so that our writers can do what they do best, write phenomenal web copy that converts and is optimized for the search engines.
6. How Do You Handle Updates to the Website?
Depending on who you hire, you will get a variety of answers:
- Updates are up to you.
- Call me if you need help.
- I can train you to make the updates.
- Updates are made at our billable rate.
- Contact us via the helpdesk, and we will make them for you as part of our maintenance agreement.
Cube Creative’s Answer
We offer several options, but our yearly maintenance agreements are the most popular ones. For the clients we deal with, this has been the perfect option.
7. What is Your Approach to SEO and Online Marketing?
Typically if you are hiring someone just to build your website, they aren’t thinking about search engine optimization (SEO) and Online Marketing, even though they should.
I have seen it time and time again. Clients only want to focus on the website, to realize that having a website isn’t enough. I compare it to buying a Ferrari but not being able to put the gas in it, let alone drive it.
Cube Creative’s Answer
Therefore our approach to SEO and internet marketing is to embrace it and help you get the biggest bang for your buck. To do that, we do the following:
- We start by understanding your goals and needs.
- We will then conduct keyword research and analysis to determine the most effective keywords to target to drive relevant traffic to your website.
- We also consider the overall user experience and ensure that the website is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate.
8. What is Your Pricing Structure, and Do You Offer Any Packages or Discounts?
Know your costs upfront and know how those costs might change. The cost of a website for a small business done by a qualified person or agency will typically range between $2,000 and $10,000, depending on the level of customization and features needed.
Cube Creative’s Answer
For current pricing, please see our pricing page.
9. Are Google Products Included?
Google offers a wealth of free products to enhance your website, with the top two being Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. Analytics is a tracking code installed on the site that reports all sorts of data on visitors, including how they found your site. Webmaster Tools allows developers to test and submit sites to Google for indexing, which will help with search engine optimization. Does the web developer do this as part of every development project, or is this an add-on service?
10. How Will My Site Behave in the Future?
Is the site going to grow with your business, or are you expected to rebuild and redesign it? What happens if you want to add a blog or social media? Getting answers to potential additions in the future will help you gauge how flexible and attentive the web developer will be to your growing needs.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that your website will be what makes the first impression on your potential clients. Therefore make sure you ask the right questions. If you are looking for an agency to help you with your website, Cube Creative Design has years of experience and a wealth of examples across multiple industries. All the staff and I are here to help your small business grow. What are you waiting for? Contact me today for a free consultation!
