I recently did a presentation on "How to know when your site needs a tune-up" "Basics of SEO what every website owner should know and How to qualify your website designer, developer or web firm. Here are some tips for how to qualify your website designer, developer or web firm: Questions your Designer SHOULD be able to provide answers to. 1. What Do you need in a website? Question A: "This is what I am looking for how would you (the designer) solve this problem" OR Question B: I am not sure what type of website I need can you explain the options so I can have a better idea of which will work for my needs. 2. Project Process&Experience;: -What is there process? Can they give you an overview? -Who will you be communicating with and how often can you expect to hear from them? -How accessible are they to you? -What is the timeline you can expect? -Who will do the work? What is their experience? (Back it up in writing and with examples- have them email you samples of their work.) -Have they built websites like the one you are requesting? -Can they provide more than 10 examples? -How many websites have they designed and developed and over what period of time? TIP: What is the current code that they are using to write their sites? Are they Mobile (tablet&Smartphone), Cross Browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome etc.,), Cross Platform (Mac and PC), User and Search Engine Friendly? TIP: What they should NOT be doing: Flash for animation or navigation or the site itself, tables, front page, imageReady. These methodologies are obsolete with the exception of Flash which is not search engine friendly and in many cases not user friendly. TIP: What they should be doing: They should be writing XHTML 1.0 Strict or Transitional or HTML 5 both with CSS3 3. CMS, Portability, What works for your site: Is the website portable- can it be moved to another system? Do you have to host with them? When do you need a CMS and what are the options? Content management systems are great if you intend to make a lot of changes to your sites text content. There are a number of options. You can pay to have a programmer create a custom CMS- this will run 10's of thousands of dollars. You can use a server solution such as Drupal, Joomla or wordress. Typically a site in Drupal or Joomla is not portable, is more expensive that a straight HTML/CSS website and most times it is not necessary. It is also less search friendly and if you are not going to utilize all of its assets then it may not be the right choice for you. There are also "flat CMS" systems such as pagelime, cushy cms and unify. These can be implemented by your developer for a relatively nominal cost. They function typically in your website browser so they are accessible anywhere, they present with word processing tools and are very easy to use. You can edit text, add images and video, add pages etc. So server solutions: Most likely not necessary More expensive Not Portable Less Search Friendly. Flat CMS systems: Very inexpensive Super easy to use (right in your web browser) Portable as they do not effect your website Do not impact Search Engines negatively as they have no impact on site structure. Benefits: You can edit your site content, and media from anywhere, whenever you like. Lots of online tutorials and video. Wordpress is for blogging. I have found that it is not the better choice to be utilized as a CMS on a website. 4. Additional Services, Maintenance, Customer Service: What additional or add on features or services do they provide? Will they inform you on software upgrades, website analysis and site maintenance down the road? Do they provide ongoing maintenance services and what is the turn around. Do they inform you of new technologies, standards upgrades etc? That will help your website moving forward. Are they going to be there for you when you have questions? For more tips and information please visit our blog. If you would like access to our online instruction on SEO please email me at the email below: Blog: http://alexiskestler.com/web-design-seo-blog/ email: design@alexiskestler.com
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