e-skills UK Guide

Choosing someone to build your website

How to choose someone to build your website

As a small business owner you clearly have some expertise and a product that others wish to buy. One skill that is required to run a small business is the ability to understand your own strengths and weaknesses, and where necessary call in additional help.

We have discussed the importance of a website in the Choosing a website Guide and by now you should understand how crucial a good website can be to the success of your business.

On that note website design is probably an area in which most small businesses need help, and you should plan to invest wisely in this area.

This guide will help you through the process of choosing someone to help build your website. It will help you make money by creating a decent website that enables you to sell more products and save money by investing in the site development wisely.

Agree your website objectives

Before commissioning anyone to build a website you need to have a clear understanding of your business objectives. Ask yourself why you are bothering to build a website and what return do you expect to see on your investment.

It makes sense to look at what kind of websites your competitors have developed. This will help you to see what works well, and what doesn’t. Some good advice here is to:

• Approach the websites and think about how a potential customer would perceive it – i.e. what are they looking for, what would impress them, and what would frustrate them?
• What levels of content and information work? You might see websites with the following content:
  • Basic company information on three or four pages.
  • Case-studies and articles, features, client lists, testimonials and examples of existing work/products.
  • Press releases and news items.
  • Catalogues and Brochures.
  • Online shops.
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and customer support information.
  • Technical documentation including specifications.
  • Links to other relevant companies/organisations, e.g. suppliers, wholesalers, partners, forums and user-groups.
• What do you like in terms of design and structure? What sites are easy to navigate and track the information you need? What sites look classy and project a professional image?
• Take notes and bookmark the sites you like, for discussion with your contractor.
• You may wish to develop your thoughts into a formal brief, or you may wish to work with your chosen contractor. It’s a good idea to ascertain a general idea of what you want and what is possible before making contact with them.

How much will it cost?

The cost of a website can be a highly variable thing. On one hand a highly skilled agency may quote over £10,000 for the development of a flat website consisting of twenty five pages of information. On the other hand, a back-room web-developer might offer to produce a website of the same complexity for a fifth of that.

It is your job to establish which of the available options offers the best value for money. The agency offer may include professional design and copywriting, while the back-room developer may be multi-skilled but is unlikely to be as competent in each of the areas as the agency team. The agency may produce a unique layout, while the freelancer might base his work on an existing template.

Price alone can be a very unreliable guide to quality. In all cases, review the quality and variety of work already undertaken, talk extensively to prospective candidates, and get them to indicate early the likely cost of any project they undertake for you.

Finding someone to help

Finding a skilled contractor can be tricky if you don’t know where to start. One of the most confusing aspects is in knowing what kind of person to look for. A contractor who describes themselves as a web designer should be expected at the very least to put together a basic website, but they may have no formal design qualifications. Their portfolio should be scoured for evidence of their competence.

One who describes themselves as a web developer or web programmer is likely to be skilled at putting together more complex websites, including catalogues and stores, but again, they may not have any specific design skill.

A designer or design agency which advertises itself as capable of web design as well as print work is more likely to have reliable design sense, but if web design is not part of their everyday fare, their skills may limit the scope of the website they produce.

Finding an individual or team that incorporates the characteristics of designer, copywriter and programmer is a big challenge, and generally the better they are at integrating these three skills, the more you can expect to pay!

Places to start looking for a web professional to design your website include:

• Colleagues and friends who can provide a personal recommendation of a professional with a proven record. Always double-check the credentials and look at work undertaken by such a recommendation.
• Your ISP may offer a design service or partner with companies which can produce your website.
• If you use a design or marketing agency for stationery or advertising, they may offer web-design services, but check they have an established track-record.
• Yellow Pages or other business directories will have a list of providers who are local to you.
• Online directories like Yahoo! and search engines like Google might help you get in touch with web designers in your region.

Assessing a potential website builder

Now it is time to speak to your short listed contractors to ascertain their competence. The following checklist is designed to be a useful to guide for your discussion.

• Ask about their experience. Have they produced similar projects for similar businesses to yours? 
• Check the evidence of other sites the designer or team has produced. Do the sites meet the criteria for usability, design and content that you established as important during your preparation?
• Ask them their thoughts about your plans for your website. Do they have any suggestions on improving and developing the brief?
• What services do they provide after the site is commissioned? Will they work to improve your site’s search engine rankings, for example?
• Establish what services they can provide. Can they host the site for you? Will they undertake the ongoing maintenance of the site and amendments in the long term? Can they train you to do this? 
• Ensure that you will own the copyright of the resulting website. Be wary of a designer who will not agree to sign over rights to you.
• Find out how much they charge. Will it be made up of a flat fee or a daily rate? A flat fee may be better if you think there will be changes during development. Will they accept payment on completion or expect interim payments? 
• Finally, ask yourself whether they would be easy to work with. Do they seem reliable and pleasant and explain things in plain English?

If you are content with your choice of contractor and the project is small, you may wish to commit to a particular contractor at this stage. If your website is large, you may prefer to write a detailed specification and invite short listed contractors to tender competitively for it.

Establish the brief

Write a clear brief before your contractor proceeds with any chargeable work. You can do this yourself after speaking to one or more contractors or you can get your chosen contractor to draft it with your consent and then formally agree it. The brief should clearly and concisely set out your requirements of the website, as well as your expectations on when it should be delivered. When formulating the brief, you should:

• Incorporate any suggestions that the contractors have made.
• Specify the structure and describe the content and appearance of the site.
• Clearly establish those components of the content to be prepared or supplied by you (e.g. the text).
• Provide explicit opportunities to vet and approve the design and content before it is completed; changes made at an early stage are generally easier and more quickly achieved. They are also cheaper than those made when a great deal of work has been done.
• Establish an agreed final deadline for the completion of the site.
• If the site is a complex one, establishing project milestones for the approval of specific components, such as the site structure, design or database makes a lot of sense.
• Cover any supplementary services such as hosting, maintenance and online marketing.

Get the project going

When your contractor has seen the brief, you should obtain and agree a price for the job. This may be in the form of an estimate (the cost of which may increase, particularly if you require significant amendments or improvements) or a fixed price. There are merits to both options, and your contractor may work on either basis:

• A variable price job puts an onus on you to tightly brief the work and efficiently deal with amendments. It may be in the interest of the contractor for the job to take longer than expected, so it’s important to monitor the budget and always be aware of how much has been spent and how much of the work has been done.
• A fixed price job puts the onus on the contractor to deliver the work in the most efficient manner he or she can. On one hand this may result in less variability in the cost, but if the job overruns within the fixed cost, the contractor may be tempted to cut corners to get it over and done with.

Manage the Project

As your contractor is completing your website, you should monitor their progress against agreed milestones and delivery of items for approval. Watch out for significant divergences from the plan and keep the lines of communication open as freely as you can.

When the contractor needs input from you, return it as quickly as possible and try to notify them of changes at the earliest opportunity.

You may be interested in the online sharing of documents and online project management Guides as they maybe able to help you with this task.

Complete the project

The project is complete when the contractor has fulfilled the brief you agreed at the start of the project, allowing for any changes which have been made on the way.

If you have monitored the development of the site closely, there should be no nasty surprises at handover, but if it has not all run to plan, it is usually better to try and amicably resolve any issues. However, if the brief is not satisfactorily fulfilled, you may have grounds for retaining payment until things are set right.

On handover of the project it might make sense to agree a date to reconvene after the site has been running for a decent period of time in order to amend it in line with visitor comments.

You should also discuss the ongoing maintenance and updating of the website.

Further information

For further information on this topic, why not take a look at this video:

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Commercial suppliers

We do not recommend specific products or suppliers; instead we provide you with a representative sample which covers the range of suppliers/products available. You may choose to look at these suppliers or products but this is entirely at your discretion.