Questions to Ask Your Website Designer Before Hiring

Building a website is the first and the most game plan to promote your business. Just remember that your website is a key investment of your business victory. So choosing a correct website design for your business plays an integral role in achieving the goal. Before hiring a web design company, just analyze the company like its strategy towards web design and development. Most important is they will grow your audience online and enhance your business profitability long-term.

Planning to hire the best Web design and development company? Well, you need to prepare a list of questions that you can ask or interview your potential design business.

Here are the tale ten questions that help the company to utilize their skills and develop the plan in a way to achieve your online business goals.

Let’s go more in detail before signing on the dotted line.

1. Can we know your core services?

Nowadays web design agencies come with the complete package. Even they break down towards SEO optimization and social media marketing as well. Never assume that a company is up to scratch just because they are offering many services. Be sure that your website designer is eloquent in your brand and provides consistency in word and image across the entire website. Remember that today competition between the agencies is fierce these days and to beat each other they claim to provide the best and quality service, which is proved to be a big lie later. Make sure you choose a team that truly an expert fits into your skillset.

2. Can you show me your favorite websites?

While asking them to share their portfolio of past designs, they will feel good and even offer testimonials from the customers who received these designs. Don’t forget to check the performance of the website while looking at their portfolio, like site navigation, the website is well-crafted, are the designs modern, see if the design matches with the business. By looking at their favorite created websites by the web designer will help you evaluate the design diversity.

3. Will you review my existing website prior to building my new website?

Firstly ask your website designer to analyze the current site’s metrics to evaluate the strength and weaknesses before making any design changes. Generally, any designer who is willing to help you to get what you need doesn’t have to convince them to build a new website if making a few tweaks to your current site is all you need.

4. Will my website be fully custom or a “customized” theme?

Many companies offer both options to satisfy their clients’ needs. There are a lot of websites out there masquerading as custom websites but they’re merely pre-built themes that have been customized for a particular client who has wanted to establish a strong brand, so they want the unique look. In the market customized themes come with free and premium options. After all, it depends on the budget. Ask your potential company how they are going to build your website and mention your interest too.

5. How do you base your pricing?

This is something that you need to know out of the gate, find out the pricing policy of your design company. Firstly, how they are basing their pricing, is it hourly or linear rate based on the completion of your project. Always remember that the pricing should be in line with the quality of the company’s work, which will reflect in how they value your brand and the importance of its online presence. You need to make a proper analysis of the price, it might not be too high than your estimated budget.

6. How many pages will your website have?

Search engines love websites that contain various pages and rich content. Generally, the type of website and content you have will help you figure out how many and what pages you need. The standard pages such as About Us, FAQs, Contact Us, and Privacy and Terms and Conditions, and other pages like blogs, services, testimonials, products will be according to your business type.

7. Do I own the site and site contents after it goes live?

This is a very important question that you need to ask before signing over the rights to your website without even realizing it. Mainly policies may vary from company to company. Some will allow clients to have their own domain name giving them ownership over the website and the hosting account. Others may not. Be sure that your domain name and web hosting are registered by your name. After owning these files do have a copy of them saved just to be safe.

8. How big is your team and how long have you been working in the industry?

A reputed company will have a huge team that includes the design team, development team, testing team, and marketing team. Moreover, the company works for a specific area only for designing which leads to a lack of a development and marketing team which are very important needs in the processing of your project. It’s not a lousy thing if the designer you’re speaking to has only been creating websites for a year or two, industry experience can be incredibly valuable. So look for designers who have five or more years of experience.

9. Will your website be compatible with every screen?

This is one of the most important factors that is whether your website is responsive and compatible enough with smartphones, tablets, and mobile devices or not. In today’s era usage of mobile is booming. So mobile websites are a must for businesses with an online presence. Basically Google has confirmed that more searches are found on mobile than desktop. After rolling out the Google Mobile-Friendly Algorithm, Google has been giving more priority to those sites which are mobile-friendly.

10. Is my website secure from hackers?

Your website security should be the topmost priority. We love Squarespace because it doesn’t require manual updates. Without a secured website, a website is like cutting corners. Make sure you discuss online security with your company and check that they provide you with secure logins.

Wrapping up

By asking these questions upfront, you can avoid the major pitfalls that cause many web design projects to go sour. Just remember your new website design should be a reflection of your business strategy goals. Take your time before moving forward with any web design project agreement. So you’re on the lookout for a web designer to work with, then just drop a line and we will be back within 24hrs.