Evaluating a Designer: Three Questions You Should Ask

Before your prospective web designer sets about doing any work, you need to ask them questions to make certain you’re getting what you pay for. Simply building a website is not enough: there are ongoing needs you will face, and you need to find out how your design firm will (or will not) assist you with these needs and goals.

Will you handle search optimization and marketing?

The goal of having a website is to attract visitors. Whatever your conversion strategy is–whether it’s increased sales, increased awareness, customer preference, whatever–your site must attract visitors. A primary means of attracting these visitors is via organic search.

Organic search is exactly like it sounds. Your business sells garden hoses, so you want people who search for “garden hose” in a search engine to find your website. Everything about the site from the information architecture, navigation and content must be optimized to bring garden hose buyers to your site as often as possible.

A web shop may have a search optimization expert in-house, or they may partner with a company dedicated to search. Either way, the act of building a website does not necessarily include the search component. You need to find out if your prospective designer will engage in search optimization.

You may wish to move beyond organic search into paid search. An example of paid search is Google AdWords. When a user enters “garden hose” into Google, the paid search results appear under the “Sponsored Links” section. Again, whether in-house or partnered, a web design shop may or may not offer this aspect of service.

If a design shop does not offer organic and paid search services, ask if they can recommend a firm that specializes in search.

Do you handle application development in-house?

Some design shops are simply that: designers. They can architect and build beautiful websites, but if your business requires anything more extensive–such as ecommerce–you will also need development work.

A web design firm that has application developers in-house will be best suited to your needs. If a design shop has to outsource custom development work, it can drive up the price of your website as each party involved must get their cut of the money. Find out up front if they provide development work in-house.

What are real-world examples of your firm’s success in solving business problems?

The main purpose of a website is to solve a business problem or set of problems. You may need to increase sales, increase awareness, or influence perception. All of these are business problems.

Ask your prospective designer for examples of how they’ve solved problems for previous clients. They should be able to provide you with concrete examples including ROI numbers where available. If a design shop can’t provide these examples, move on. They’re not going to help you and you’ll be back where you started in no time.