Where do you start when you are ready to have your website redesigned? What will it need to do? What should it look like? How much will it cost? Answering these 20 questions will help you get an accurate quote and the best results from your web designer.
- What is your industry? Look around and see what others in your industry are doing with their websites. What are they doing right? What can you do better?
- What are your clients looking for when they visit your site? Is it something you can provide through a website? Are there common questions you can answer or forms you can offer as a download?
- Who is your target audience? The more specific you can be, the better. Imagine the perfect client and write your website content for that persona.
- Who are your competitors? What do you do that they don’t? Now is the time to do some competitive research. Is your customer service better? Is your product or service better? Do you serve a particular group?
- What image do you want to present? This will help determine the design. Very different approaches to web design will be taken if you want fun and friendly or corporate and professional.
- What are your corporate colors? They will be used in the web design, but to what extent? If you have dark heavy corporate colors, you may want a neutral, inviting color as the main color with your corporate colors as accent colors.
- What imagery needs to fit in? Are there any particular photos or illustrations that need to be part of your website? If you have been using the same cartoon mascot for years, be sure to provide your web designer with the graphics.
- What other media needs to fit in? If you are using video, audio, eBook downloads or some other media on your website, make sure it fits into the overall plan. If there is heavy traffic and downloads, you may want upgrade your hosting plan to handle the volume. If your regular web host doesn’t allow the bandwidth, you may incur extra expenses when your downloads are accessed more than you planned for.
- What are the goals with the redesign? You might want something flashy that will be memorable. You might want something that is easy to update or search engine friendly. These variations will make a difference on how your website is built.
- What is the current site doing well? If you are ranking well for your search terms, you will want to take steps to make sure you maintain your rank. If your current website is usable or nicely designed, find out how you can keep that in the redesign.
- What areas need improvement? A website redesign is the perfect chance to get rid of those broken links, under construction pages and update the content. It’s never just one thing that needs to be fixed. Make a wish list and prioritize it.
- Who will add content? If you or someone in-house will be making updates to the website, a content management system might be perfect for you. If content is added infrequently and you don’t want to spend the time learning web design, having your web designer make occasional updates might be the better option.
- How will content be added? Is your in-house staff trained for web design? Do you need something simpler like a content management system? Are you hiring an outside source for content? Will you be hiring out the content addition?
- Will you be selling anything through your website? This is important. Selling from your website will make a big difference in your website construction.
- If so, what payment methods will you be using? Credit card processing on your website will require security and increase the time and cost of the website design. Taking payments only through PayPal means PayPal handles the processing and security on their website, not yours.
- How will this affect search engine rankings? If you are ranking well now, make sure your web designer can redirect the old pages to the new so you don’t lose rank. Now is a good time to restructure the pages and website architecture to help improve future Search Engine Optimization.
- What is the deadline? The longer the deadline, the more options you can have on your web design. A simple template site might be finished in a short amount of time, a custom eCommerce website could take a few months.
- What is the budget? Do your research ahead of time and budget for the web design. Typically a small to medium sized business website will be in the $3,000-$8,000 range.
- What other marketing should coordinate with the launch of the website? Are you having an unveiling of the new website? Will the redesign coordinate with the new year or new season? Make sure you allow enough time for the site to be completed and tested before launch.
- How will you promote the website? What social media channels need to be connected? If you are doing email marketing, you will probably want an email signup box. If you have a members only area, you should offer a members login area of the website. RSS feeds are a great way to distribute content and keep readers updated.
If you are ready for a quote, fill out the Web Design Quote request form.
