From Office Technology Magazine:
Think about your goals for the Web site. What is your major goal? To be a product information resource? A contact point for your customers to contact you? A contact point for you to contact your customers? A showcase of your unique company or products? Once you have a major goal, talk with a designer about the best way to achieve it. Obviously, there will be many goals for the site but try to focus on one or two—chances are, succeeding at your main goal will also help you succeed at the other goals.
When selecting a designer, look at previous sites designed by the company or examine their portfolio. If many of the sites seem similar in style, your site may end up looking like them. That can be good or bad. Discuss the software that the designer will use to design your site and find out how updates to the page will be made. Will you have to purchase the same software the designer is using? Generally speaking, the answer should be no. Who will get the rights to the site style and content? Generally speaking, it should be you.
Look at the designer’s sites using a dial-up connection (and, if possible, a variety of browsers). If the site takes more than a few minutes to load, talk to the designer about it. Many customers may not have broadband connections and are you willing to alienate them as customers for a large decorative graphic or an unnecessary web plug-in? The designer’s site should be a reflection of their talent and ability since they have complete control over it.
Talk with the designer about using Cascading Style Sheets. Cascading Style Sheets are documents that control the look of certain elements on a Web page. By designing with a Cascading Style Sheet, one set of directions in one document controls what all the pages look like. Want a change in how the pages look? Simply make the change to the set of directions and the look of every page is changed. Previously, style changes had to be made individually, on every page. The major downside of Cascading Style Sheet is that not every older browser supports them.
Talk to the designer about accessibility for viewers with disabilities. The least a designer should do is make sure that every image has an “alt” tag that informs the browser what the image is (if your designer doesn’t know what an “alt” tag is, shop elsewhere). That is only the first step (but a big one) on a long trail to making a site accessible to everyone. If your business has contract work with the government, it is very important that you understand the responsibility of accessibility.
See if the Web design company uses code that is contrary to the goals of the language. A quick, easy way to find out if the code may not be the best possible is by checking for the <font> tag. To do this:
You can also check the code by running it through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Validation Service. This free service will tell you if you are looking at a page that uses valid coding practices. Simply go to “http://validator.w3.org/,” enter in the address of the page you want to test, then “validate this page.” It will either tell you that the page is valid or it will point out its problems. If the problems are numerous, you should take note.
Make sure your contract with the designer clearly explains what is expected of the designer and what you will get for your money. Additionally, create a timeline and stick to it. Provide the designer with everything the contract requires (such as text content) in a timely manner. The sooner you provide what you are supposed to, the sooner the designer can complete the site.
Benjamin Hubble is owner of El Visible Design, a full-service Web design firm. Contact him at ben@elvisible.com or visit www.elvisible.com.