Planning a website redesign? 5 steps to make sure your website company can create your vision.
Creating a new website design is both a costly and time consuming effort. There is no lack of ugly websites on the web. If you are considering starting a new website design or redesign project understanding the right questions to ask potential website design companies can help ensure they understand your company’s goals, and are capable of completing your project on time, and on budget.
If you are considering a website design or redesign, then the following questions will help ensure your website design company is capable of executing your website goals.
Does the company understand your website design goals?
Did your company have you fill out a website design questionnaire? If not, then that should be your first sign that they do not completely understand your vision and direction. A good web design questionnaire will define the persona you would like to portray with your website and company through the overall look. For instance, if a client says they want their site to be professional, then the website design questionnaire will help define what type of aesthetic they associate with professionalism. This is important as a client’s definition of professional and a website designer’s definition of professional may mean two different things.
Does the company have a project management process?
Who will be managing your project? Will it be a project manager specifically dedicated to organizing all of the aspects of your project and being your main point of contact throughout? Communication is such an integral part of creating a custom design. It’s also very important that that project manager understand great design and the latest trends.
If so, does the project manager have a design background? A lot of companies will have one project manager to interface with clients, which is fine, but if the PM does not understand design appropriately then they will be relaying comments to the actual designer without a real understanding of what the client is asking for and ultimately needs.
What is the company’s design revision process?
More specifically, how will they capture your design comments? A good company will use a software to help capture your comments. Applications like Notable are used to capture a client’s comments, and will make the turnaround time for revisions much faster – especially when there are multiple stakeholders providing input.
Will you get unlimited design revisions, or is there a set amount before extra charges apply?
A great design takes time, and there can and always will be revisions. A lot of companies will allow 3-4 design revisions before they start to charge. (quote design revisions article) For our company, We normally go through 4-5 rounds of design revisions before a client settles on a custom design. It’s not completely uncommon to go through 8-10 if a client wants to try new ideas, or wants our team to be creative. Design companies can get very vague during this portion of the contract and negotiations, as they do not want to lose you as a customer. Make sure this portion is thoroughly defined in the contract.
How many unique designs will you get?
It’s very important to find out how many unique designs you will be receiving. Have you ever clicked beyond a home page and noticed the internal pages almost all look the same? This website only had two unique designs. This is not enough to make a website memorable. The best way to determine how many unique designs is to have a proper sitemap planned out. This makes determining which pages need to be unique much easier.
How is extra work classified?
Its always best to try to plan out your project in its entirety before starting, but occasionally a client will want to add on a new feature midway through the project. Some of the most commonly added features are a blog, team pages, company directories, or a database to hold company documents. There should be a clearly defined way to help understand how extra work is charged. Will it be by the hour project rate?
How many designers will be working on your project, and are they in-house or freelanced?
Designers are skilled labor, and just like any skilled position they have strong points and weak points. Some are amazing artists and can draw anything you can envision, others are in love with font, and some focus solely on clean designs and conversion. It’s not uncommon that the average project may need one or all of these skill sets. The company should be able to talk about their designers and their skill sets in detail.
Are these designers in-house, remote or freelance?
If the company is freelancing the design, then you should be weary. Mainly because the freelance designer is probably working on a project basis, with his or her own unique revisions process. The design company then has to relay that freelancer’s revision process to you, through them. If you are truly looking for a quality design, then you should be working with a team of in-house designers. A 10 minute session in front of a white board with 3 designers going through website concepts will allow for much higher quality work.
Will the company be creating your design custom, or will they be modifying an off the shelf WordPress theme?
In the design industry, there are a lot of website design companies who do not create custom work, they only modify themes. When we attend WordPress meetups these folks are referred to as “themesters”. In some cases, this is ok, (mainly for smaller projects, or really early startups) but if you plan on making money on your site or plan on your website lasting for a full life cycle (5 to 7 years) then a custom designed site is the way to go.
The post How do you find the best website design companies for small business? appeared first on Clikzy Creative.
