Web site of the Week
Top 10 Questions to Answer Before
Hiring a Web Site Designer
The main cause of web site design
overrun is poor planning and last minute changes. Here
are the top 10 things you should know BEFORE you talk to
a web designer.
1. Do I really need a web site?
While I personally agree with
Entrepreneur magazine, that you're not a business until
you have a web site, not all businesses and
organizations need a web site IF your prospective and
current customers do not have internet access. Duh! This
seems obvious, but is often overlooked.
2. What is the purpose or function
of the web site?
This is crucial information for the
web designer who will help you achieve the right look,
add the right features and options to achieve your
purpose.
Are you selling, educating,
informing, promoting? Goods or services or both?
I have my clients write a 2-3
sentence "mission statement" for their web site before
we do anything else.
3. Who is your ideal site visitor?
Defining your target market is a basic
step. You need to know what you site visitor wants to
see on your web site and give that to them on the
homepage. You have only about 10 seconds to capture and
keep their attention.
4. Will you promote your site to a
regional or national audience?
The answer to this question will help
the web designer to know if they need to optimize your
site for search engines to reach a national market.
5. What domain name(s) would you
select?
Some people register more than one,
then have them all redirected to the same site.
Choose something
-
easy to spell and remember
-
that is descriptive of your
business or organization
-
that does NOT contain "special
characters" like "~, _ -" (search engines don't
recognize these)
-
that is NOT a monogram of your
name, unless it's already a well known entity
6. What "look" or "feel" do you
want to convey to your site visitors?
I recommend having you surf the net
for your competitors web sites and send them to me-
telling me what you like and don't like. It's also a
good way to do a comparative market analysis to see how
we can make your business stand apart.
7.
Do you already have a corporate or
company image (logo, artwork, font styles, and layouts?)
in your other marketing materials?
If so, do you want to continue that in
the web site or do something completely new?
8. What is your budget?
Consider the cost of web site design,
then add on web hosting, domain name registration,
submission to search engines, and web site promotion.
9. What is your timeline for
completion?
I'm pretty fast in getting a simple
web site together, but there may be things I'll need to
learn/research on yours. I'll try to accommodate your
timeline, but as with all computer stuff, unexpected
glitches sometimes occur.
10. How will you keep visitors
coming back to your web site?
You may wish to offer
