If you want your Web site to work -- and keep working -- make sure you consider these factors before you start building it.
Building a Web site can be a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle -- sometimes the picture looks good, but when you look closely, pieces are in the wrong places. A Web site might function perfectly, but as soon as you make a change or an update, the picture falls apart.
How do you avoid these kinds of problems when hiring a Web designer or developer to build your company's site -- or when building a Web site in house? Here are five questions you can ask -- or ask yourself or your team -- and some feedback to help you understand the answers.
1. What Web Standards Do They Follow?
This is a great question that will fluster someone who doesn't have standards. What are Web standards? This is the way of designing and coding a Web site that allows the site to grow with technology and the Web visitor. This means using clean code and technologies like:
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): a simple mechanism for adding style like fonts, colors, and spacing to web pages
- XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language): a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax
- ECMA Scripts: the standard version of JavaScript used on most web browsers.
If you're hiring someone to create your company's site for you, you don't have to know how to write these languages; you just have to know what the standards are to understand the answer. (If you're building the site yourself, you had better know them inside and out.)
A simple way to help you connect to this question is to remember that people online don't all use the same Web browser or operating system. Designing and developing to standards gives your Web site the ability to look and function the way it should on different platforms.
2. Do They Design For SEO Best Practices?
It's no secret today that everyone wants a Web site that can be found on search engines. Implementing search engine optimization may not be what you want your designer or developer to do for you; you may have another resource in mind to lead your SEO strategy. However, how your site is designed or coded can affect your SEO options. When you interview developers, this is a great question to ask and see if the person you're interviewing is familiar with how to code to meet SEO standards. Here are a few items that affect SEO best practices:
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): Designing a Web site to meet SEO best practices means using style sheets to cut down on the amount of code on the Web page. Search engines like to see text, not code.
- Script files: When you use dynamic items on your site like image galleries or mouse-over menus, these are usually created through JavaScript. To follow proper SEO standards, script files should be created for pages instead of having the script on your web page.
- Web page content: As much as possible, your site's content should be on the page as text, not buried in images. Words shown in images are not picked up as content by search engines. Ideally, this concept should even include your Web site navigation. Talented designers can find ways to make text visually appealing without having to put it inside an image.
3. How Do They Plan For Change Or Growth?
One of the most stressful lessons learned by veteran Web designers is that the Web site you built yesterday will not allow you to grow tomorrow. And being told you have to start over is one of those statements every business owner can't bear to hear.
Before you begin, ask the question, "Does the technology you're using allow me to grow or add additional functions?" You may even want to take this further and think about tools and features you might want to add down the line. You can also ask designers or developers to provide you with a brief list of tools they have already integrated with sites like yours. This allows you not only the opportunity to see if they are knowledgeable, but also whether they're supportive in providing you with ideas.
Next Page: How Do They Test Their Work?
