Blueprint for Design

Matt has been writing a series of articles outlining what it takes to hire an architect. His posts inspired me to write about what it takes to hire a web designer. Here are a few basic questions you might want to ask yourself before you start inquiring with web designers. Most are going to want this information in order to give you a proper quote and begin.

What is your budget?

This is probably the most important question.  I’ve worked on websites that cost as little as $1000 and as much as $10000. With websites, I believe you truly get what you pay for. When thinking about budget, be sure to include some sort of recurring monthly fee in mind for hosting.  This also can have a pretty significant price range, $5 to $100.  It all depends on who hosts it and what kind of services you’d like. Finally, a domain name, or multiple domain names will need to be purchased.  These typically cost about $10.

What do you want on the site?

Start thinking about what kind of content and how many pages you’d like. Do you want to sell products? Do you want a blog?

Who is your audience?

A pretty simple question. Who are you trying to cater to; an age group, gender, business type, etc. This certainly will affect the overall design and functionality of the site.

How much updating will your site need?

Chances are, if you’re hiring someone to create the website, most likely you’re going to want to have them update it for you. That is of course assuming you, or someone on staff doesn’t know how to make updates themselves.  This will add extra cost in the future.  (See next question for an option.)

Would you like to make changes yourself?

These days, most of my clients expect to make updates themselves. This means that the site has some sort of database associated with it and a content management system (CMS). This option may cost more up front, but could save money in the future since the end user is making the updates.

Do you have an identity?

Do you have specific colors, a logo, fonts or any other design elements that the designer should know about up front? If the web designer is expected to create an identity rather than working from a pre-existing one, it could increase the cost significantly.

When do you want to go live with the site?

It’s an important question.  It could take weeks or months to complete the site depending upon the scope of work for the site and the workload for your chosen designer.

Stay tuned for more on the topic of hiring a web designer.  Future posts will include questions to ask the designer, what to look for in a designer, how to be critical of their portfolio and more detailed questions to ask them.