Getting your website designed can be an expensive process, it can also take a few weeks to months of your time, so how can you be sure you’ll get the right person for the job?
A website is typically broken down into the 5 parts (more for more complicated sites)
- The Design:- the actual look and feel of the site
- The HTML:- the coding which works behind the design but allows (or disallows) search engines, readability etc.
- The Server-side Coding:- This adds the main functionality to the site, email forms, database, forums etc.
- The Marketing:- This helps your site be seen.
- The Support:- Who do you call when things go wrong?
Every-body’s requirements are different, but most people will need to consider all of the above to get the right long-term relationship. Here’s how:
The Design
Have a look through the designer’s portfolio, notice the colours, layouts and styles. Everybody has a different idea as to what does and doesn’t look good. If there was one right answer, every site would look exactly the same! What you want is a designer who can produce work that you like. If they already produce designs you like the look of, then you’ve saved half the trouble of this stage.
During the design process, most designers will allow constant amendments (within reason) to get the results you want. Be sure to check with them beforehand. Some designers offer 1 draft, 1 amends and 1 final. From experience, this is usually enough. For budget and time’s sake, it’s usually best to try and stick with this anyway. If you know exactly what you want, and are a good communicator, then this will be easy.
Also to make it easier for your designer, pick a few sites you like the look of, take note of colour-schemes, styles again and let your designer know. This again will save time as they should be able to merge the elements you like into a flat file ready for processing. BE SURE YOU’RE HAPPY WITH THE DESIGN AT THIS STAGE, CHANGES TO THE DESIGN LATER ON CAN INCUR EXTRA CHARGES.
The HTML
The next phase is usually to construct the HTML. This is where the design is taken by a CSS coder, broken down into it’s many parts to be rebuilt for the web. It’s up to this person whether to leave a large red box as a red box image, or write the HTML to draw a box with a red background on the fly. This is to ensure their are as few actual images as possible but keeping to the original design. This stage generates a list of instructions for the browser (firefox, internet explorer) to follow, for example ‘Show this image, put it over there, next to it write ‘Welcome to my site’ etc.
There are two main ways of doing this, neither are wrong, but one is certainly better practice than the other.
Method 1 - tables.
The boffins at the HTML decisions office decided to give us a command for our arsenal. The table allows us to add a table of information and add in prices, contents pages, menus etc. Web designers have figured out that if you have a 3×3 table, you can insert images and use this for placement.
Whilst this works, it does have further issues, the main one being accessibility and search engines. Blind people using the internet through screen readers and search engines, both read a site in a linear fashion, tables can make this a very awkward process as the machines will treat a table as a table of data. It also generates lots and lots of code which the search engines have to sift through to find your content.
Method 2 - CSS.
This is much better practice, the text and containers are placed in the html. A separate file tells the browser where everything goes. This separate file can be easily ignored by robots and search engines get right into your text. It also has many more positioning features than tables and can create a much more user-friendly experience. If you want quality over budget, you could also ask if they do XHTML rather than HTML. XHTML is a slightly better use of HTML, it is given slightly more preference again in the search engines but is has very strict rules so can be difficult to find someone who can.
Ask your web designer which method they use. For your purposes, it may not matter. You can often get cheaper rates from people using method 1, but better quality site, better search engine results and better accessibility from method 2. When you get your site, right click and hit view source. If your code is full of <table> , <tr> and <td> tags, they’ve probably used tables. Ask a random IT professional or web designer on Ecademy to check, most will take seconds to be able to tell you. Make sure you got what you paid for. While you’re there, check for the <frame> tag. If it’s there, you may need to kick up a stink. Search engines, particularly Google hate frames and they should be banned.
The Server Side Coding
PHP, Perl, ASP.NET, Coldfusion are just some of many. This code you never see on the website, but it manages so much. It doesn’t matter which one your designer uses, as long as they’re competent at it. If you want the site to be edited later by in-house staff however, it is better to match up the technologies to make sure they understand what they’re about to be given.
The serverside coding is the part that does things behind the scenes. (instant results and effects are usually another format entirely, Javascript. This is for another blog) When you upload a file, something needs to receive and know what to do with that file. When you complete a contact us form, something needs to know how to process it. If you’re administering your own site, there must be code to do so.
When browsing their portfolio, test what you can. If you want a user registration and login, have a look to see if they’ve done it before, try logging in with fake details. You’ll no doubt get an error message, but make sure the error message is on the same site. If the login sends you to another site, this code is probably managed by a third party. If you want a forum, make sure it can be done, calculators, crm’s, cms’s etc.
It’s at this stage you may hear words like Joomla, Mambo, Drupal. Don’t worry, your designer is not putting a hex on you. All of these (plus many more) are pre-built packages available for free download which many web designers use. They take a lot of the hassle out making a website editable. Some designers use their own software (like myself) as they can be pretty generic. All should be able to provide you with a demonstration so you can see how easy/complicated it is to manage your site. If you don’t like it, ask about alternatives.
Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation
Find out what they can offer you in terms of marketing. Search engines will not find you if they don’t know you’re there. Any good designer will submit your site to all the major search engines by default. If they don’t, find out why not. You can also submit your site yourself using services such as addme.com (use a temporary or free email address so you can avoid the junk mail) This submits your site for free to most of the major search engines. You only need to do this once however.
Ask about search engine optimisation. This is often talked about as a separate service but most of it should actually be covered in the HTML part of the site at no extra cost. If you have the ability to amend your own information, a good designer can give you good pointers, or speak to Nikki Pilkington on Ecademy for ongoing checks and reports. To do it yourself, 299steps.com offers some fantastic advice.
Pay-per-click, this can be completely self managed. Google’s own system allows you to pay for adverts on certain searches. You’re bidding for positions though so some keywords are more expensive than others. If you can’t work it out, or would rather not have to worry about it yourself, again your ongoing SEO person or Nikki Pilkington or even your designer can manage these for you.
The Support
By the almost random nature of the internet, things do go wrong. Your website will crash, it will go down, it will run slowly from time to time. Sometimes you can’t get your email, sometimes you can’t send. What support packages does your web design offer? More often than not, if things go wrong it’s not your web designers fault, but they should have enough knowledge to tell you where the problem is and what you can do to fix it. If you have an IT support person, this may already be covered but it’s worth checking. The most important points are how easy is it to get hold of the right support person when you need them? Do you often have to leave messages on voicemails or can you only call during certain times? How quickly do they respond to emails? Ask if you can speak to one or two of their clients, ask specifically for people on their portfolio and find out what they think of the designer you’re considering.
Hopefully this will ensure you are better armed for that first enquiry into getting your site designed or redesigned and that you can understand some of the jargon you may have thrown at you.
What would happen if your web designer disappeared tomorrow? or if someone managed to hack into your web site? Things have been known to go wrong, and if they go, it can make your life agony.
I’d like to speak to local graphic designers who don’t currently offer web design as one of their services.
