Build trust before websites
(interview questions to ask a web design firm)

Determining who should build your website can be an intimidating task. It's critical you select a web design firm that not only excels at web design and marketing, but also provides long-term customer service and is extremely trust-worthy to boot, because they'll have access to extremely sensitive and valuable information about your company.

You need to be confident that you can trust your web design firm's capabilities and business practices. That way you can concentrate on your core business rather than worrying about your Internet presence.

A typical approach is to ask a series of technical questions and then try to assess the appropriateness of their answers. Unfortunately, this requires you to bone up on web technologies and their respective pros and cons. Instead, here's a list of questions to ask that reveal the web design firm's awareness and (hopefully) mastery of web building topics. Whoever you're interviewing should be able to answer the following, clearly and concisely.  

• Do you have full-time staff for the following tasks: design, content development, editing, testing, usability, search engine optimization, web and email server maintenance, programming or database development (if needed)
• What are the qualifications of the staff performing those tasks?
• Name three resources (e.g. trade journals, websites, blogs) your designer uses to keep current with the latest technology and news. (Repeat this question of the search engine optimizer, usability expert, and programmer.)
• Is search engine optimization built into the original web design and architecture? Or is it performed after-the-fact?
• What are the full costs of building the website? (Do they clearly explain this?)
• What are all ongoing costs for maintaining the website? (Again, do they clearly explain this?)
• What are all ongoing costs for marketing the website? (Do they volunteer that, although many websites do need extra marketing "nurturing," there are also some websites that can flourish relatively autonomously?)
• Do you provide hosting? If so, is it onsite or through a 3rd-party?
• What are your backup policies for the web, email, and, if applicable, database servers?
• How will people find my website? (This question reveals their web marketing methodology. Tip: if they primarily discuss "meta tags," which have become nearly irrelevant, that's a red flag. Other red flags are discussion of the web architecture only, or, conversely, ongoing marketing only).
• Show me a website you optimized for search engines. Please perform a search using an optimized search phrase. (The optimized website should be displayed on the first page of search results).
• Do you use "splash" (intro) pages or frames? (Most firms that specialize in web design abandoned these techniques years ago, due to major usability problems).
• Do you build your website on Flash instead of traditional XHTML? What are the pros and cons of Flash? Pros and cons of XHTML? (If they provide good reasons for using XHTML instead of Flash, it's a sign that they use Flash when it's actually appropriate, not because it's the only web technology they're versed in).
• Do you test the site at various screen resolutions? If so, which? (They should use 1024x768 as their baseline, as it's the most common resolution)
• Do you test with Internet Explorer? (Many designers prefer FireFox because it tends to be "better behaved," plus has a bevy of add-on tools they like. Designers who use Macs tend to use Safari. However, as of June, '08, 54% of all people use Internet Explorer. Only 2.6% use Safari, per http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp )
• What are web-safe fonts and colors? Do you design with them in mind?
• Do your websites degrade gracefully? (This means their websites are still functional on web browsers used by the blind, as well as browsers that are common on cell phones and handheld organizers). 
• Do you provide meaningful, easy-to-understand web stat reports and analytics?
• Do you provide ongoing web monitoring and marketing services?
• Will you provide me with usernames and passwords for my domain registration, web, email, and database accounts?

Remember, the primary purpose of these questions isn't to evaluate their web design skill-set, per se. Instead, it's to reveal their business processes, pricing structure, and awareness of web design issues (to determine if they specialize in web design or just do it "on the side"). 

Look for a firm that can provide clear, thoughtful, sensible answers to each question. If their answers are vague or unclear, it's a sign that they don't have a full mastery of web design.

This article was originally published in the Coeur d'Alene Press' North Idaho Business Journal