Questions to Ask Before Selecting Your Web Designer

What to Ask Your Website Designer Before Hiring Them

If you’re looking to hire a web designer to help you with your small business website, there are certain things that you should ask them to ensure that they are a good fit for your business. Here at Morgan Branding, we have put together a series of questions that will help you to determine if the website designer you are thinking of hiring is a good fit for you and your business.

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Can You Design a Website That Fits My Budget?

The most crucial part of your entire project is knowing if the services being offered fit in with your budget. Most website designers or agencies now have their prices on their website – but you should always be 100% sure and ask as certain aspects of your design or requirements might fall outside the standard packages offered. 

Be sure to ask for quotations and scope of work upfront in writing and the designer’s payment terms – i.e. deposits, payment structure and terms etc. 

Do You Work In-House or Outsource Your Projects?

Knowing where your work is being produced can help down the line if anything was to go wrong. This can apply more to development work than actual design. It is essential to know this more so if there are complex or custom design aspects to your website that these are produced by a team who know how they have been completed and, more importantly, know how to fix them if they go wrong. 

What Is Your Design Process?

Every website designer will have their process, and there is no fixed process to follow per se; however, there should be a process of how things work and a timeline of how it will get there. This keeps things honest for both client and designer and allows you to see where things will be at each process stage. 

How Long Will It Take To Complete My Website Design?

It is essential to know how long your website will take to build for several reasons, such as planning for its launch or ensuring that the infrastructure is there to host it in time. Some websites can be made within days, and others might take up to a few months; it all depends on the complexity of your requirements and the designer’s workload. 

What Do You Need From Me Before We Start the Project?

Ensuring you both know what is required before starting is paramount. You don’t want to get to week four and find out that the designer is waiting on something from you, such as logo files, content, and images. Any website designer worth their salt will advise you of this in advance and will do their best to ensure that it is a smooth process – but as with most things, forewarned is forearmed! 

Do You Have a Portfolio I Can See?

Seeing past examples of your designer’s work is a sure way to know if their design style suits what you are looking for. Despite aiming to make every website unique, every web designer will have design traits and flair, which shows in their work. Checking if this fits your vision and aim for your website ensures no nasty surprises down the line. 

Which Content Management System Do You Use?

With so many to choose from, such as WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Duda and Drupal, to name a few – then there are hand-coded websites too, knowing which and how your website is to be built should be right up there on the first questions to ask your designer. This will enable you to know things like if you will be able to make changes to your site easily and how it needs to be hosted etc. 

Do You Follow SEO Best Practices When Building the Site?

SEO best practices when building a website do not ensure that your website will rank well in Google but enable it to rank quicker and do less work down the line for any SEO work you are planning. Things like:

• Website structure
• Meta Data
• SEO plugins
• Sitemaps
• Image optimisation 
• Speed optimisation

Will all play their essential part, and it is much easier to implement these when building the website than it is to implement them once the website is live. 

How Many Rounds of Edits/Revisions Are Included?

Cheap websites have a significant floor when it comes to the design process, and it is usually that they are built quickly and with little thought for the end outcomes. This is more prevalent in the revisions you may request. Having an agreement with your web designer that revisions are included or how many are permitted before extra costs are involved before you start ensures that you are both aware of this upfront. 

Need further advice? Get in touch with us here at Morgan Branding we have a fully dedicated team ready to help you and your business get ahead online. You can get in touch via our contact page or get social with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn! 

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