Outlined in this post are the biggest bottomless pits for website development and occasionally - design for business owners; along with what you can do to thwart it. As business owners, there are constant needs for keeping an eye on the future and working which can often push website needs aside, especially in a small business. The general principles to reference are:
- Go with a web firm or consultant (referred to as firm forthright) with background, preferably with high profile clients that show they maintain consistency.
- Act as if you were hiring a salesperson. In essence, this is what a website will become and you have to make sure the firm making it has the goods, preferably in relevant industries.
- Touching on the previous principle - if you are in need of web-based software - does the firm have real-world, related work to show?
- Get all of the questions out of the way as soon as possible...Especially if you are on a tight deadline for a launch, presentation or convention. If the person says yes to everything, no to everything or simply offers everything free...they are not fit to make you a successful website or revamp your current one - much less host it.
- See how long their firm has existed online by using a Domain WHOIS tool such as DomainWhitePages.com (see Creation Date).
- How long do they estimate completion? Use this as a general rule of thumb: 1-3 weeks for small scale <15 page website, 30-45 days for <50 page dynamic website and 60-90+ days for 180+ page website.
- Do they have a time line of events to completion? Have they generated a list of items needed from your company?
- Does the website speak to your customers? What does the firm know about organic SEO? Pay-per-click campaigns? eCommerce? General website trends? Statistical spike tracking? Has the firm given you full access to the static, dynamic or database data after launch? Does their server run daily backups automatically? These are just a few questions that will help assess ideal firm selection.
In the author's extensive history with web design and development, he has met small businesses with disastrous, sometimes inches-from-bankruptcy companies that are led on by web firms across hundreds of thousands of dollars and months of broken promises. Although sometimes it is simply a project creep, the largest factor has to be market saturation of inexperienced web producers. So choose carefully.
Have a great weekend!
Comments