5 Questions to Ask Your Web Designer

Having a well-designed, eye-catching and informative website is perhaps one of the main keys to promoting your business, achieving the successful marketing of your goods and services and generally ensuring that the name and existence of your business is out there and on as many lips as possible.

You are likely to want a professional and experienced website design company – such as us here at CSI Media – for putting your business on the web in this way. But building a website is also a two-way process, which depends on your own input and guidance – input which might be enlightened by the questions you ask your web designer.

Here are 5 of the questions we suggest that you ask in order to achieve the website that serves your business purposes and objectives.

1. Samples, price and payment terms

You are likely to get a good idea of the style, tone and approach to the design of your website by asking to see examples of other sites the company has built.

You might also ask about the prices that were charged for each respective site, so that you care able to prepare your own budget for those similar to whatever you might want.

When asking about payment terms, you might want to avoid companies which require total payment upfront, in favour of those that request stage payments as particular milestones are reached and a final payment when any agreed number of revisions have been made.

2. Template or custom build?

Although they are likely to be considerably cheaper, websites built upon existing templates have less flexibility and less scope for creative and imaginative design than those which are custom built.

What is the design company’s preference and, if both approaches are used, how do prices compare?

3. Is it to be a responsive website design?

Practical eCommerce suggests that you ask whether the finished product results in a responsive website that may be accessed as easily and effectively from a desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone.

Is the way the site loads optimised for mobile use, or is it simply a smaller version of the site viewed on a desktop?

(Check out our recent blog: What is the difference between mobile and responsive web design? for further reading as to why a responsive website is so important).

4. Who is writing the content?

Your website design company might offer to write the content required for your site and optimise for search engines. They should ask you to provide a brief outline or list of bullet points that you consider important for inclusion.

If you prefer to write the content yourself, it may still be important to discuss those SEO keywords to include and for a description of the tone, style and word count that is likely to be appropriate.

5. Likely results

The success of your new website and the results it produces of course depend on a whole host of factors – not least the nature of the goods or services you are offering, the current state of the market for them, and the marketing campaigns the site is designed to support.

Despite these many variables, however, your website design company should be expected to offer views at the very least on the likely growth in business it prompts.