The process of designing your new business website can be intensely rewarding—even fun. Or, it can be an exercise in frustration. The key factor is in the website design team you use. By working with a skilled and reputable team—a team with whom you find it easy to communicate—you can ensure that your design process goes smoothly, and that the final product is something that fills you with pride.

Naturally, you’ll want to choose your website designer carefully. Not all designers are created equal, and there’s value in doing your due diligence. Before you hire a designer, arrange for a consultation, ask plenty of questions, and make sure you feel really good about the agency you’re hiring.

As you think about the questions you might ask, use the following as guidelines.

What to Ask at Your Web Design Consultation

Do you have any third-party endorsements or awards?

It’s important to understand that pretty much anyone can say that they’re a website designer. The spectrum ranges from truly professional firms to freelance operations that may or may not be reputable.

The best way to ensure you’re selecting a company with high standards of professionalism is to look for external validation, including awards and accolades from within the digital marketing industry.

For example, at enCOMPASS, we have a number of honors to our credit, including numerous W3, Davey, and Summit Awards. We’re happy to share more about these accolades and endorsements.

Do you know how to build a website from a marketing perspective, and do you have the results to show for it?

It’s important that you have a website that looks sleek and professional, and that helps you achieve decent SEO rankings—but that’s not all your website should do.

Ideally, your website will be a sales generator, helping you bring in qualified leads that can be funneled directly to your sales team.

To achieve that goal, you need to work with a website design company that understands the importance of UX; where to place CTAs on the website to ensure maximum impact; and so on.

Look for a Web design agency that not only understands these factors but can provide you with some data to prove they’ve done their homework.

Do you include on-site SEO at the website launch?

We mentioned SEO above, and that is indeed a critical consideration.

When we talk about on-site SEO, we’re talking about such factors as SEO keyword research, title tags, H1, H2, H3 tags, meta descriptions, image tags, 301 redirects, internal linking, and more. All of these should be built into the site before it launches.

This is a real imperative, and here’s why: If you don’t include on-site SEO at the time of launch, it can potentially cost thousands of dollars to do an SEO retrofit down the road.

Nobody wants to pay that much money to do SEO work on their brand-new site—so make sure you work with a design team that will include it in their process.

What does the website design process entail?

It’s important to have clear expectations about exactly what your website design team is going to do for you—and what role you’ll be expected to play in the process.

The typical website design process has a number of crucial steps, and at several of those steps your input will be needed. For example, you may need to be involved with setting up the page navigation; helping select colors and fonts that reflect your branding; sharing information about your website’s written content; then approving that content in a timely manner.

A good website design team will have the process down to a science, and they’ll be able to walk you through each leg of the journey—giving you a good, general sense of how the timeline will unfold.

When are you available to start on my website?

Purely on a practical level, you’ll want to know roughly when the design team can begin their work.

And here’s a hint: If your website designer says they can start right then and there, you probably want to move along.

That’s because a good, reputable website design team will typically have a pipeline of clients who they’re serving; they may need to hold off at least a week or two before they can start work on your project.

Simply put: If a design team has an empty schedule, there’s probably a reason for it.

Talk to the Web Design Team at enCOMPASS

Our designers are always happy to talk about our process, answer any questions, and ensure that our agency is a good fit for your needs. If you want to get to know us a little better, we welcome you to call us today. Let’s set a time to talk about your website design needs.