4 Small Business questions to ask your Web Designer

Making a new website can be an exciting and scary proposition. There are a lot of people that do "web design" and very few who are actual professionals. I've taken the liberty to list a few common questions that I've heard before and a few that I should hear more often. Chime in, if you think I'm missing anything.

1. What role did you play in the sites you've shown me?
   Everyone posts sites they've "worked" on but often times they don't go into detail about what they actually did for each project. This is key to finding out if they were the project manager, the actual designer, or just someone who scheduled the client meetings
2. Are you a designer, a developer, or both?
   Be aware of your contractor's limitations. All to often a developer will "design" a site and low and behold, it'll look like an engineer puked all over your domain. And sometimes, when a designer acts as a "developer" you can be presented with an image that will impress and amaze, but the sub-par technical implementation will lead to future costs.
3. Are you (or is the developer you're working with) WC3 certified?
   Making sure your developer/designer is WC3 certified is like making sure your car will only need a paint job in the future instead of an engine overhaul. One will cost you a couple of hundred bucks and the other will cost you thousands. (A Key: in this example, your site is the car, the programming is the engine, and your design is the paint job).
4. Will I be able to edit the site myself?
   You'll want this (also known as a content management system). You're designer will want this too. Having your vendor charge you a quarter hour's worth of work so you can revise that sentence to have an apostrophe on it will get old really fast. Some designers work with a content management system, but if they don't, refer them to cushycms.com. It will cost a little extra to implement, but it'll be worth it in the long run.

TIP: Your website does not generally include a logo design. You logo design is also known as your corporate identity and should be considered independently from your website. Consult your designer on their pricing for your corporate identity.

5 Questions I ask my Web Design Clients

Here are some basic questions I ask my web design clients before we get started. I thought you might find it handy if you're thinking of having a website created for you or you're creating websites for others.

1. What is the goal of your new website?
   Are you selling something? Are you letting the world know about your business? your hobby? Are you offering your clients a tool that makes their job easier? Their lives easier?
   
   By sorting this out right up front you can steer all decisions towards this goal as well as get a jump start on the marketing (if that's your job as well, I tend to do everything from start to finish)
   
   
2. What can I do for you?
   Do you need web design only or do you want me to develop your site as well? Do you need a domain name (www.awesomeninjamonkey.com)? How about hosting your email? If you're selling things, do you need credit card transaction services? Do you need pictures taken?
   
   Hosting the site yourself, as a web designer, tends to make things easier when it comes to developing the site.
   
   
3. What do you want your site to look like?
   I usually work with my clients to come up with a list of websites they like the look of, as well as a few of their competitors websites. This way I can understand their overall market better, improve our site versus their competitor and make the look and feel fall in line with their tastes.
   
   
4. What do you expect of your website?
   This is where we work out which keywords they want to work hardest for them as well as some overall marketing goals. Do they want to focus on low cost methods such as search engine optimization and social networking or do they want to take it a step further with pay per click marketing, and other types of paid advertising.
   
   
5. Who maintains your site after it's done?
   I use http://www.cushycms.com for my clients' content management needs. It seems to work pretty well, it's very easy to install and incredibly easy to use. So far so good. You can even brand it for your design business for a fee. It allows the client to edit all of the content, and images as dictated by the designer. Any major design changes are still done by the designer and the integrity of the structure of the site stays intact.
   
   Or some clients bring their site editing in-house. And in that case, it's pretty easy to hand it all over.
   

Enjoy the New Client Questionnaire DOC in all of its glory.