Asking the right questions of your web designer in the beginning will help prevent costly retrofitting down the road. Once your site is operational and indexed by the search engines, it becomes much more difficult to redesign it later. This can cause frustration for you, your staff, and, more importantly, your client!
Get the main points of web design correct from the start and you should have clear sailing ahead of you—even when changes are necessary in the future, it will be less disruptive for everyone. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a sample web design checklist.
1. Do you understand the business model and USP?
Be sure that the web designer understands what you do, how you do it, and how the site is to interact with your customer base. They should understand your monetization model and whether there will be spikes in traffic at certain times. One strategy might be to explain your business model to them and have them describe it back to you to make sure there is no miscommunication.
The experts at WSpider are well aware of the inner workings of active businesses and organizations—we’re naturally here to lend a hand and help guide you through the process.
2. Do you understand the target market?
If you are marketing to seniors and the site is designed for 18 – 30 year olds, you could be in for a problem. Many of the bells and whistles that attract younger prospects turn off the older crowd and they’ll buy elsewhere. Many don’t have the computer savvy that the rest of us have.
Make sure your web designer intimately understands your target market and builds the site accordingly.
3. What do you have in mind in regards to information architecture?
You want your information architecture to resemble a pyramid with your most important keywords at the top. You can then branch out with secondary keywords, and finally, long-tail keyword phrases. You should also structure it for ease of use where you or your staff can add content pages efficiently.
4. How do we achieve a professional design?
Again, your web designer needs to take into account your target market when it comes to professional design. It should be tailored to your specific clients’ needs. (And not to boast, but we’re really good at this at WSpider.com!)
5. What do you recommend for tracking and analysis?
To understand the effectiveness of your website, you need quality, relevant statistics on how your clients are using your site.
6. Will it contain easy usability for clients and staff?
This is critical. If the users of the website have trouble navigating it, you’re going to have to retrofit to bring it up to speed or lose business.
7. Will we be able to maintain the site in-house?
Basically, you want to know if you are able to maintain the site day-to-day or will you depend on the designer every time new content needs to be added or updates crop up. CMS is a great solution for those wanting to have more involved access.
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