12 smart Questions to ask a web design company
Your website is the single most important component of your marketing engine. No matter what ad campaigns you run, no matter how many social media platforms you’re active on, no matter how many people you network with, all roads lead back to your website. That’s why building it the right way is essential to get right from the start.
Let’s start with some basics. There are essentially two kinds of business websites :
The first kind is what I call the brochure website. Basically these websites function pretty much like a brochure. It contains basic information, hopefully uses good imagery and simple navigation and pretty much enables a business to be able to check the box on having an online presence. These are the most simple kinds of websites. People look at them like a form of a digital brochure when they get referred there by some place else. This might be all your business is looking for. For many businesses it’s all that’s needed, but know that Google does not prefer this kind of website because it’s short and simple and won‘t be regarded as an “authority site” where people will spend much time. So, perhaps after all you’re ready for your new website to actually help you attract new business - not gather virtual dust. If you do, then that’s where the second kind of website comes into play.
The second kind of website is one that is an actual sales tool - meaning its goal is to attract new leads to it - and once they’re on your website, it then gets visitors to take some kind of action on it. It might be downloading a free resource, reading a blog, joining a newsletter or simply filling out a contact form. The purpose of having a website that works as a sales tool means you now have a marketing asset that you can leverage to build your customer lists from, connect with people interested in learning more about your business and so on. I talk more about how to do this in chapter 6 of my book The Client Stampede. ANY business can have this kind of website, even if you don’t sell anything online. Typically the sales tool style website is going to cost a lot more to have designed and built because it has more pages and takes a much higher level of marketing and design skills to create than just a digital brochure style website.
Now that we’ve discussed the two basic kinds of websites, let’s move onto asking your web company the right questions - which apply equally to both kinds of websites.
Here’s a list of 12 important questions to ask:
What platforms do you use to build websites on? If they say Wordpress or Squarespace, exhale and move onto next question. If they say “we use our own custom platform or HTML programming - move on quickly. You don’t want a website built on a custom platform as it will be slow, expensive and difficult to update and you’ll be locked in. Wordpress or Squarespace are both excellent and well proven platforms that offer all you need and can handle small and enterprise-size company websites.
How would our website be hosted? This is an essential question to ask - you want to own the hosting. Otherwise if your website company owns it, then the second you cancel services with them, your entire website is gone. Everything disappears into the ether. What’s website hosting? Its essentially the digital real estate you’re renting to have your website appear on the internet. Website hosting is always paid for through a third party - for example godaddy, hostgator, or Squarespace (hosting is included in Squarespace with the website design). This is a cost that you want to pay for separately and own the account to so you retain control of it.
Does your service include graphic design services and photo editing? For examples what happens if we want a new logo created or a more updated brand? Will the company do this for us? Will they edit photos - crop them, resize them etc - or are you expected to provide them with everything in a final format?
Who writes the content for our website? For example will they include copywriting services, and can they rewrite our existing content to sound much more appealing to our target audience? Or are you expected to send them all the page content and they’ll just take what you give them and create online pages for it?
What’s your process for designing our new website? How many options will we have at each step of your process, how long do we have to approve things and how many rounds of revisions are included?
Will you also connect/integrate our new website to our social media accounts and email platform?
What happens to our old website? This is a really important to ask because if they are simply scrapping your old website and rebuilding you a new one, then this also means your website will have lost all it’s ranking history in Google - meaning how easy it is for someone to find you online. This is a BIG DEAL to have to start over on, so proceed with caution and make sure you understand exactly what the company is proposing to do before you give them the green light. Remember there are no dumb questions, especially when it comes to the murky world of marketing.
How many pages will our website be? What happens if we want more pages added as part of this project? What happens if we want more pages added after this project has been completed?
What happens if we want to upgrade our website and add, for example an e-commerce store, or add a free download to our homepage. How would this work? How much would this cost
What happens if there’s a delay at your end?
What happens if there’s a delay at our end?
Are there any additional third party costs or hidden costs that we haven’t talked about yet eg image licensing fees etc. Once you’ve created our website - what happens then? It is ESSENTIAL that your business has the ability to manage your own website - even if you don’t want to. You should never have to pay a company to make changes to your website. Find out if it’s built on Wordpress, who makes updates, what the additional monthly costs are (if any), what kind of team training is available to teach you and your team how to add content etc.
Tips and traps to watch out for:
Make sure you always keep ownership and control of your website, for example make sure your company owns your domain (www.YourBiz.com) and never agree to transfer it to a website company. You can give them access to it to link to your website, but never agree to transfer your domain out of your own account and into theirs.
Ideally your company should also own the hosting so if you choose to cancel service then your website doesn't get cancelled too.
Double check that your company owns all the content and is not licensing anything from the website company. This has become less common but there are still unscrupulous companies who build websites and then “rent them back” to clients in the fine print.
Get clarity on any ongoing services. What are the additional costs to add pages, add downloads, or add e-commerce functionality?
Now you’re armed with the tough questions to ask, your job of getting a new website is going to be SO much easier, plus you’ll impress the website design companies you interview!
