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Your website and You: part 2

Written by Glen Hughes on September 23rd, 2008 1 Comment

If you read our post yesterday entitled “Your website and You“  then you understand a few of the reasons many small businesses have craptastic web sites.  You also should be able to read that and diagnose some problems that might arise with your own site. Today we introduce you to some people who can help you.

Do I need to hire a professional?

A web developer, who read our post yesterday, said on Twitter “Somebody had to do it, good for you. Supports my theory that 90% of the intertubes should just use Wordpress.”  Honestly, I couldn’t agree more.  In fact, this web site is run on the Wordpress blogging platform.  Many Salem businesses run their sites on a blogging platform and it eliveates a world of headaches.

However, if you want your site to stand out while using a blogging platform as a Content Managment System (CMS) you will need to create a custom theme (like we have) and you might want a developer who is familiar with the platform to help you set it up and get you going.

For everyone else who doesn’t want a blog, but still wants a professional site that adheres to yesterday’s rules, it’s time to find a designer & developer (or full service web shop) to get you moving.

People contact me daily to promote their Salem based businesses, projects, groups, bands and events.    Marc Amos and Angelo Simeoni, recently formed a group of web professionals called the Build Guild. When they contacted me I knew it was a great opportunity for people who live in and around Salem. It’s through this group I discovered just how many Salem-based freelancers there are.  Some build flash sites, others focus on ecommerce. Some build cool applications you can add to your site, while others just make your web presence pretty.

For the average Joe who doesn’t know what  hex values, rails, xml, seo, ppc, css or any number of other acronyms are, finding and hiring someone to help you create a professional online presence is a daunting task.  Why does one person tell me I can build a site for $200 while the next guy says its $20,000?  I sat down with local developer Marc Amos, who runs a Salem-based business Boston Web Studio, to help demystify these issues.  The following is what he suggested to get you started.

List of questions a business should ask a developer.

1. “How long have you been designing and/or developing websites?”
2. “Can you name a few of the companies you’ve completed projects with and what your role was in those projects?”
3. “Have you designed/developed a website for another company in our industry?”
4. “Are you solo or do you work with partners/a team?”
5. “Do you also providing a hosting service, or can you recommend a quality hosting company?”
6. “What sort of target-audience research do you do before starting the design?”
7. “What is the general project process? (How do the unique phases progress? [discovery, information architecture, wire-framing, design, client-review, etc.])”
8. “Are you self-employed or are you freelancing at night and on the weekends?
9. “Once the project is complete, what source files do you provide to us?”
10. “Do you design every site from scratch, or do you use templates?”
11. “How do you stay on top of web design & development trends?”
12. “Do you attend any design/development events, big or small?”

How to interact with a developer

Many designers/developers that I know prefer to communicate through non-traditional mediums rather than by phone. For example, after a project is kicked off much of the conversation will happen via a project-management tool such as Basecamp or Unfuddle (both of which send out email notifications). If there isn’t a project-management tool in use, email is probably the preferred method. It allows the designer/developer to have a “paper trail” of requests, conversations, files, deadlines, and other important information that they can refer to later; it’s often the case that when a client calls their designer/developer, they don’t receive the full attention they expect because that designer/developer is in front of a computer and probably working on something that is consuming their focus. To this same point, a designer/developer may even let many of the phone calls go to voicemail for that same reason–they’re too deep in a consuming task to break their focus and answer a call. Doing so usually results in the designer/developer having to back-track to the beginning of their task to re-establish their focus. (Wow, that was a long point)

If you’ve hired a well-qualified designer/developer, understand that, most of the time, they will know what is best for your web site’s visitors. Don’t hesitate to allow your well-qualified designer/developer to make suggestions or decisions that you yourself aren’t so sure about. Just as a well-qualified contractor has a reputation to lose if he does shoddy work on a home, a designer/developer stands to lose if s/he does shoddy work on your web site.

List of what questions to expect from a developer

1. “Do you have any analytical data for your website?” (referring to Urchin stats, Google Analytics, etc.)
2. “Can you describe your target audience?” (Sex, age range, interests, location, etc.)
3. “What existing marketing/branding material do you have?” (Company logo, brochures, letter-head, etc.)
4. “What marketing has been done recently?” (Radio, T.V., online pay-per-click campaign, etc.)
5. “What companies are your direct competitors?”
6. “Could you show me three websites you think look great, regardless of industry?”
7. “Could you show me three websites you think look terrible, regardless of industry?”
8. “Do you have a budget?”
9. “Do you have a deadline?”
10. “Who will be my direct contact during the project’s duration?”
11. “Do you have content written for the website?”
12. “Do you have all photos/videos/media files for the website?”

Hopefully this primer helps you separate the hacks from the true professionals. Here in Salem (as you can see if you’ve looked at some of yesterday’s example sites) we have our fair share of clueless lunkheads masquerading as web professionals.  I encourage you to look at who built some of the more horrible sites and avoid them.  In my experience bad sites often have links back to bad portfolios giving you a head’s up not to use that guy.

Or they link to a “designers” email

Or worse of all, they link back to some bad DYI that let you build your own site.

Most good sites, on the other hand, are above linking to the developer.  You need to ask the site owner who built it.  Most people won’t mind if you drop them a line and ask who did their site. You might even get an insight as to how the developer was to work with.

There are some larger or more notable shops around town if you need more specialized treatment or an entire team to get your project going.  You can even find they guy who wrote the book(s) on proper design and how to implement it, right here in Salem.

Where can I find a developer for my project?

My first bit of advice is if you are a local business, band or organization, then try to hire someone local. Build your community up.  The best route is word of mouth. Find someone locally who does a great job. How does that person’s portfolio look? Do the sites they build stick to the rules we discussed yesterday?  If so, then contact them and ask some of the questions we talked about today.

Watch out for poseurs. Recently I met a guy trying to sell one of Salem’s new businesses a website.  He had read a few books and took a JavaScript class at a local community college.  Doe-eyed, he asked me for advise about getting into the development field. I told him:

It’s easy to get sucked in to the glamorous lifestyle that is the web professional.  Let me tell you from personal experience the days of razor scooters, pinball machines and funky loft spaces are over.  Being a developer in Greater Boston or San Francisco is like being an actor in LA – start waiting tables now.

We’ve got some great talent here in the Witch City, talent you don’t see when you walk around town.  Do yourself a favor when it comes to your website, build a georgous hotel with a doorman not a flea bag pay-by-the-hour motel.

I invite local web professionals to comment on this post and link to their own portfolios, talk about their work or show some examples in order to help our readers get a more personal connection than a simple google search.


One Response to “Your website and You: part 2”

  1. jeff On September 24th, 2008 at 9:27 am

    Thanks for the site props!
    Seriously, this is a part of the business that is very hard for me. I am a silversmith, after all. My idea of making art involves setting things on fire with a torch and beating them until they are beautiful!
    Having done the website so badly for so long, it is nice to think I am moving in the right direction.

    The site is still “under development” in my mind.
    I asked my new designer for a site that I could update without having to learn a programing language. Specifically, so I could get in there and update artists, schedules, etc without having to rewrite the whole page.
    Word Press has been perfect for that.
    … and while the site is not where I would like it to be ultimately, it is current!
    A huge step in the right direction.
    Hope to be adding more pictures, etc in the near future.
    Stay tuned, and let me know what you think of the updates.

    Thanks again!
    =j=

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