Three Questions You Probably Forgot to Ask Your Web Designer

Your company’s website is the face the public sees most often. It’s a primary means by which you acquire new customers, and it’s a service portal for existing customers. These days, as print catalogs and the telephone go the way of the dinosaurs, your site may be the only means of contact between you and your customers.

Now you’re ready for The Big Redesign (or possibly your first real website) and you’ve got to hire a web designer or web design firm. Without constructive, meaningful direction from you–the client–the web designer will be of little to no help in achieving your ultimate goal: building a website that serves the needs of your business.

The best way to ensure your needs will be met is to ask questions. You wouldn’t hire a new employee without an interview, so what makes a contractor or freelance worker any different? Leaving aside the technical details (platforms, programming languages, etc. that can be found in any resume or portfolio) for a moment, let’s take a broader look at some questions you may not have thought to ask.

How would you solve our problems?

Every business has a problem (or several). Chiefly, this problem is how to sell more stuff. Your website is to one degree or another incorporated into your sales and customer service structure. Therefore you have undoubtedly had customer, supplier or internal feedback on its design and information architecture.

By doing their homework, carefully examining the RFP (if you have one), looking into the needs of your industry as a whole and your business in particular, and demonstrating success with previous clients, a web designer should have several good, clear ideas about how to help you solve your website problems. They should be able to provide web traffic statistics and conversion goals from previous projects to validate their work with numbers.

Who will generate content?

A key component of website design that is often overlooked–either until the end or forever–is content. Without content, a fancy website means absolutely nothing. Most web design shops, big or small, are not staffed or equipped to generate quality content. Instead, many rely on reorganizing the content that you have into the new architecture and design.

This simply will not do. If your web design firm does not employ a professional writer on staff, hire one. If you have a marketing and communications department (even if it’s just one person), your designer needs to work with them. If you don’t have writers or marketers on staff, hire one freelance. Don’t rely on people–no matter how talented–who think in PHP or Photoshop to write good content.

How will you address user needs and usability issues?

There are two types of information on websites: information your customers/visitors want, and information you need to tell them. You know your product inside and out, and you know why it’s the best choice out there. That’s all great, but that doesn’t mean you have insight into what your customers or potential customers want to know about your business.

Your expertise also fails to translate into knowledge about how people actually use the web and thus your website. Should the navigation be on top, the left, or the right? Would a big green “BUY NOW” button be appropriate, or a small text link? You may think you know, but you probably don’t. A designer who makes amazing Flash sites with grungy backgrounds and blurry text might be making some serious art, but they may not be helping you sell.

A good web design firm will either conduct or recommend user testing, or for a small business demonstrate knowledge of user interface design best practices. Good interaction design will create the best of both worlds: your visitors have the opportunity to learn what you need to tell them, and it will be easy for them to find what they need.

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