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Twenty Rules for Web Designers to Live By
When interviewing a potential webdesigner to handle the special project of designing your website, following are the rules that ALL webdesigners and design firms must follow in order to satisfy you. If not, then consider suspect that firm/individual. After all, it's only your business and your online success.
- Interview. Is the design firm spending the appropriate time with you to learn your business, learn your methods and strategies? Or are they just "strutting their stuff" like a proud peacock and giving you a bunch of their advertising material? Be wary of the slick alligator-shoe salesperson who is looking to make a fast buck off your ignorance. Rule of thumb: a good firm will lock in several hours to learn your business, study your collaborative materials and thoroughly interview you. It's a good move for you to make a financial investment in the professional that will interview you, if necessary. They should however provide you with a transcript of those meetings.
- Client List. Don't look at the total number of clients, ask how many of these are ACTIVE clients.
- Client List, part 2. Are any of the clients in their list within your industry? If so, it's a good bet this designer/design firm has a thorough perception and understanding of your industry.
- References. Ask to contact their ACTIVE clients for references. Thoroughly check out both the design firm AND the designer.
- Samples. This usually goes without saying, but keep your eye peeled for samples of websites that include custom programming. Programming skills are relatively hard to fake and a good indicator you are dealing with a professional. If their samples look like they were designed by a 15-year old, then trust your gut.
- Insist on meeting the actual design team you will be assigned, before you sign on the dotted line. You don't want your project assigned to an intern straight out of high school. Insist on having their direct dial phone numbers, besides the phone number of your account manager.
- Fixed pricing. Negotiate a project rate for your site. Run away from an hourly rate. Get this project rate in writing and make sure you cover all of your requirements up-front. Refuse to pay for their education and don't pay a dime over the project rate you negotiated, up front.
- Payment schedule. Make sure you clearly understand what the schedule for payments is expected to be.
- Changes. If you decide to make changes during the design process, do these in writing. Ask the design firm what the cost implications to the project rate will be, and get this in writing. Approve it and keep a copy for yourself. You will be surprised how many firms fudge the numbers here.
- Rights. Negotiate who will own the copyrights to the content and graphics designed for your website. In most cases, the design of the website is usually owned by the webdesign firm unless specified and negotiated in advance. Didn't know that 'eh? Most design firms don't want you to know that because they want to reserve the right to re-use the design they did for you and even possibly resell it at a later date. Make sure you cover this in your negotiations.
- Timeline. What will be the specific milestones for the development of your website project? Move away from esoteric intangibles and have the designer map out for you, so you can understand, the measurable definitive logical steps to get your business online, and when you can expect these steps to normally take place.
- Responsibility. What specifically are your responsibilities in this project? What is the responsibilities of the designer? Get these all written out, up-front, and clearly know when they are due. Always position yourself ahead of the curve so the designer can never claim "we are waiting on you to give us so-and-so."
- Concepts. Will the design firm show you multiple concepts for your website, or just design one and sell that to you? You usually want to show your designer several websites that are online now that you like, pointing out the specific features of that website that appeal to you and why. However, don't just settle for one design from your designer - ask for two or three very different looks and models.
- Hosting. Be very careful - some firms will insist that the website sit on their servers after the project is completed. They will insist that this will allow for better management of the site. Baloney. Select the best vendor that will provide you the hosting services you need and don't pay for services you don't. Your designer will be able to upload the site and make changes easily - whether or not they host it.
- Domain name. Same as above, except that the design firm will assign you an internet address. Find out who owns that address, and make sure its not a virtual domain (yourname.theirname.com). You don't want to end up in a domain name ownership dispute. They're nasty legal things that get very expensive and very confusing.
- Content. We can argue until we're both blue in the face about the quality of the content of your website, but one thing is very clear: page content should be flawless in grammar and spelling. Get in writing who's responsibility it is to proofread your content. If that is your job, and you can't proofread at the same level of someone who works for The New York Times or Forbes, then get someone who can. As the Seattle Times reported "Know that many grammar snobs will immediately go elsewhere if they spot an egregious spelling error, in the same way that they will stop reading a magazine if they spot something they know is wrong."
- Review. Don't accept the right to review your final website and launch it without seeing it live at a private, secure site. Make sure that besides seeing your website pages in print, you get the opportunity to see your functional website live online, in a location that you can securely access. What you see in print wont be what you'll see online, and vice-versa. Insist on this, up-front.
- Usability. Make sure you (a) test your design in as many different browsers and computing platforms as possible, (b) view your website without loading graphics to make sure that it is easy to view and navigate without the graphics. (c) Finally, have a minimum of five users test-drive your website before launch while you take notes and listen. Don't fix the problems they may have or talk them through how to find what they are looking for; rather, take notes.
- The latest gizmoids rule. According to a report published by eMarketer, a full 70.6% of all websurfers connect to the Internet by 56Kbps modem or less. The evidence is painfully clear: users beg us to speed up page downloads. The designer should work with you to ensure quick downloading pages, not necessarily provide you the latest, flashiest, astonishing graphics that the latest software programs may provide. Have a doubt? Then tell me why 9 of the Top 10 commerce websites aren't full of flashy bloated graphics? Speed.
- Aftermarket support. Some designers will accept final payment, upload the graphics to the webhost, launch the site, and you never hear from them again. Smart designers will offer a fixed period of support after the launch, included in their proposal. They know that things can sometimes go wrong and will allow for resources and staff to be available to you, holding your hand as you first venture online.
Watch these rules carefully; they were written to protect you from unscrupulous webdenizens. If you're a webdesigner worth his/her salt, you shouldn't have a problem with anything written here. If you do, perhaps it's time for a career change?
Daniel Ramos is the President of Genesislogic Inc., a New York City based ebusiness that helps companies massively profit from the Internet. As both a designer and marketing strategist, he has been involved with technology since 1984, working with both small business and Fortune 500 firms including NBC Cable Networks, First Union, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Alliance Capital, The Trane Company, Abraham Publishing, On the Rise Records, Pitney Bowes, and others. He moderated The Small Business Forum for one of the earliest large-scale internet service providers in the mid-1980s, Delphi, which now boasts over 2 million members, as well as moderating the Music Business forum on CompuServe. If you want to learn how to massively profit from the Internet, vist WWW.GENESISLOGIC.COM and download from an extensive online library of resources, or send an email to INFO@GENESISLOGIC.COM. Thank you.
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