If you are paying someone to create a product or service for you, you obviously want them to do the best job for you that they can. There is a lot of information that may seem irrelevant or strange that a Web Developer might ask you for. In this blog, we will go through 10 pieces of information and why someone might need to know it to ensure your website is the best it can be.
Do You Have a Currently Have a Website?
One of the first questions you will be asked about is whether you already have a website or not. Having a basis to go off of is going to help your Web Developer enormously with their task.
If you don't already have a website, then it is nice to work from a nice clean slate and jus discuss ideas back and forth with your Web Developer. They will more than likely give you suggestions after you give them the parameters in which you want them to meet. Hopefully they have ideas or suggestions you hadn't even thought of. Once you give them a rough idea of what you are after, a Web Developer will be able to point you in the right direction with your ideas.
Whilst working from a clean slate is good, working from an already existing site is equally as good, if not better for a Web Developer. Not only do you have an already built idea for them to work from, but it gives a Web Developer a good grasp of what did and didn't work with your last website. They can analyse your old website, discuss with you what you did and didn't like about it, give you ideas on what your audience would be looking for and implement those changes based on your discussions.
Using your old website as a starting point will make the work go a bit quicker for your Web Developer and will certainly give them a huge amount of knowledge on what you have asked them for.
Who is Your Audience?
Your audience, both current and desired clients, are important to note when it comes to considering your website. Knowing both the current and your ideal future audience are both equally important.
This information will help your Web Developer to inform what needs to be done to change your existing website to suite the needs of your future audience and let them understand why you haven't been getting the audience you want in the first place. If your audience is fine as it is, but you are looking for a larger customer base, your Web Developer can also try to understand why the audience you have been getting has been smaller than you liked and give suggestions on how to bring in more.
Once you have some data on the audience you get after your new website has been made. Your Web Developer can then hone in on the positives and make the negatives smaller, making sure to increase your audience and eventually increasing sales.
Would You Be Writing Blogs for Your Website?
This might initially seem like a question a Web Developer wouldn't need to ask at all. If you do want to write blogs for your website, there will need to be a page on your website for that.
That isn't where it ends. A blog is a very powerful tool in attracting visitors to your website. Making a blog post every so often to your site actually helps your SEO and makes Google (or whatever search engine you are targeting) look through the new content on your website and can make it appear in searches it hadn't previously appeared for. This ultimately, gets your website seen more, so a Web Developer would advise you to write a blog if you can, purely for the fact that a website with better content that it's competitors will eventually outgrow the competition.
What do You Like About the Websites You Visit?
This, yet again, might seem like an odd question at first glace, but don't be fooled by how impactful this can actually be. You may not initially have an answer to this question, since it's not usually a thing you might think about. After you have gone away and researched through websites that stuck out to the most and why, telling this to your Web Developer will give them a better understanding of what you might want on your website and what aspects you didn't enjoy when browsing through to see what you liked.
Features you saw on that one website combined with the aesthetic of another, might be exactly what you were searching for. Giving your Web Developer a better idea of your overall vision for your site is never a bad thing.
How Much Media Would You Want On Your Website?
This question, once again, seems quite strange to ask. However, this is actually really important for your Web Developer to know, because it's a factor on how much your website could cost in the long run.
Videos, especially long videos, can take up a lot of space if you have several dotted throughout your website. Having more and more images/videos means your website takes up more space and can cost more if you go over a certain threshold. Those thresholds are varying from web host to web host, but, if your website really needs that amount of content then it's worth to pay extra.
Having a constructive conversation about this to your Web Developer, can help you understand exactly how much it can cost you, and if you might be able to shave off some of your content to get under certain thresholds, Your Web Developer might even know specialist places to get the cheapest deals on web hosting.
What Specifically do You Offer to Your Customers?
Whether you are making physical products, or offering a service to your clients, your Web Developer is going to want to know the specifics behind your business.
Teach your Web Developer what exactly it is that you do, you don't have to go into gratuitous detail (unless they ask for it.) However just enough information for them to go off of. After they know everything you do, not only can they more accurately portray your content and services to your audience, but because they learnt it from you, they can also write the content in a way you're happy with.
If you can teach your Web Developer the ins and outs to your work, they can in turn, teach your target audience with the correct vernacular that they might not have otherwise understood or knew about.
Who Are Your Competitors?
This is another question you may or may not have thought about before. Dependant on where you are on your journey as a business, depends how many of your competitors your are aware of or even exist.
After a Web Developer knows a few of the companies you call competition, they can get to work analysing the content, along with the good and bad points of each. They will come back to you with their collected data, and provide what they think is the best course of action to be above your competitors, as well as the best route to take for your website as a whole.
Do You Have a Logo?
This question seems like an obvious one, but can lead into much more than just owning a logo. Your Web Developer will obviously need to have your existing logo from you to put it on your website.
If you don't have a logo, your Web Developer might know someone who does, or possibly
offer logo/brand creation as an extra service in their repertoire. You can discuss your desired colour pallet and overall aesthetic with them, as well as the typeface and other visual elements you would need to keep the theme of your website together.
The amount of detail you will be asked to go into will vary based on the skill and knowledge in this particular area that your Web Developer understands.
What Social Media Do You Use?
This is probably one of the more niche questions you will be asked. Not all Web Developers will offer extra services with your social media and some might not even know much about them in the way of forwarding a business.
If your Web Developer does offer extra help with your current or new social media, it would be wise to accept their offer. It will help you immensely in the long run to have a social media for your business. A Web Developer might even be able to help you in the future with content creation for that very same social media platform. They may know someone or even have the skills themselves to make posts for you.
Keep in mind, this won't often be the case, usually you will have to start or manage your social media without the help of a Web Developer and instead look elsewhere for help with that.
Do You Have a Google My Business?
You might not even be aware of what this is. A Google My Business is a way of getting your business seen more easily and more often on Google. This wont often be asked of your by your Web Developer, but in a similar vein to your social media, can be a very useful conversation.
If your Web Developer is offering to help you with setting up your Google My Business, it would be strongly advised to take them up on their offer. Google My Business shows off the location and information of your website right on the first page of Google, if your listing is high enough, without the need of a user even clicking on your website link in the firs place. This means your business gets seen more often and thus can achieve a bigger number of people clicking on to your actual site.
The best part about Google My Business is that it entirely free. meaning the only extra cost to you, would be if someone is setting it up for you. Once again, if you are unsure about the best way to set it up, ask your Web Developer, who will more often than not, understand local SEO and how to get good results with it through Google My Business.
This is a simple yet highly effective method of making your next website exactly what you were after, just by having clear communication between yourself and your Web Developer, as well as giving them all they ask for, no matter how niche. Good communication is key and if you are ever unsure as to what or why your Web Developer might be asking or doing something you don't quite understand. ASK THEM! They will be more than happy to explain their methods, no matter how odd their initial questioning might be.
If you are in need of your own Web Developer, don't be afraid to check out the rest of the content on Responsive Web Design. We have several other blogs and lots of information regarding all your website development needs.
Call us on - 01782 497244
Comments