There are a variety of questions to ask a web design company before you hire them and here are some of the questions that I have been asked over the years and a few questions that my knowledge of the field tells me that they should be asking, but may not be.

Have you built a similar site before? ? This does not have to be exactly like for like, but a web site (or combination of web sites) that involve the same complexities. As for instance, a property lettings web site will need a database of properties, but does not need a shopping basket. So this would be acceptable if you are advertising products for sale, but if you want to run a full ecommerce website with checkout and payment facilities you want to see more.

How much will the initial web site price? ? This is one that potential customers always ask, but some companies sometimes hide extras. Does this price include taxes? What about the annual hosting of the website and the domain name registration? Are there any monthly license fees or any other fees that may be incurred in the first 12 months?

What are the annual hosting and maintenance fees after the first year? ? Your website designer may pass the web site over to you to host, but most will host it for you and charge you for this. You need to budget for this in future years and know whether it will be a small amount or as much as the original creation of the site.

Who?s name will the domain name be registered in? ? Hopefully your web design company will register the domain name that you are paying for in your name (even a ?free? domain name is paid for really). But several are sneaky and register it in their own name. If they cannot promise to register it in your name then walk away. Otherwise, if in several years you want to move to a new website design company you might be stuck with them refusing to hand more than the domain name for you.

Where do you get stock photos from? ? This is a question that every customer misses out on, but is vital. It is crucial that stock photographs are properly purchased and licensed. Only copying photographs and images from other web sites and Google Images can land you in lots of hot water and leave you facing a hefty bill for damages.

Where do you rate on local searches? ? Most web design companies will get a load of their work through local searches, if they understand and know how to optimise their own website well. But, if you search for website design and their town and they do not appear on the first page of Google, it is a good indicator that they do not know the first thing around optimisation. In this case, how might they optimise your site to make sure that you are getting search engine traffic!

These are only several of the initial questions you need to ask a website design company before you hire them. Make sure that you find them approachable and straightforward to work with and you are onto a winner.

Written by Keith Lunt, who offers a web design Merseyside service. For more useful tips, call into the website design blog.

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Tags: appointing web designer

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Development Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.