This is a continuation of our Before Hiring a Web Developer or Designer article.
Two More Good Questions
How will search engines find my site?
As you’ll see in the aforementioned presentation, Google (meaning all search engines) will love you if you have an accessible site, but how else will you be found is a good question. After all, once you have a website you’ll want to make sure it is found. Ask your developer candidate what other steps will be taken to ensure a successful site.
If they respond with “I will submit your site to the major search engines,” that’s fine and good, but not really that effective or necessary. If your site is made right, you’ll be indexed (found and noted) within two weeks anyway. Don’t turn away, though, they haven’t said anything wrong, but do ask them “what else will you do?” and “what will I have to do?” for that matter. These are pretty understandable questions, questions you probably want the answers to now that you’ve been made aware of them.
They should explain to you at this point how they use the right page elements and bring up accessibility, and how they will put the “title” element to use. And if you will be able to add content as you would on a blog or dynamic website, they should explain how they give you the power to continue their good work. You should be presented with tools and methods.
If talk turns to subjects like broadcast email announcements, getting your link on 100s or 1000s of blogs, link-exchange or affiliate programs, run away fast. This is getting into some dangerous territory. You want to avoid situations where your good news will become someone else’s spam (i.e., junk email, junk blog comments, which will probably lead to a worthless deletion or filtration. And you want to avoid situations where if Google discovers your practices, you’ll be penalized by being temporarily de-indexed.
Talk should instead turn to things like “natural SEO” (Search Engine Optimization), or the advice to “give it time” or that “you will have to work at it.” These are honest phrases used by web developers who practice natural SEO. It is effective, and quite powerful. It’s the sort of thing you need to be taught.
Will you teach me? Will I have to learn?
Ah, tricky. Two questions, good questions, both related. The one answer you want to hear is a double “yes.” Yes, he developer should be eager to teach you, to show you the ropes, to give you the ammunition you need to not only survive, but thrive, to eek every ounce of energy from the fantastic site he or she will create for you.
And, yes, you will have to learn a thing or two. You may have buttons that write the code for you, but it’s essential to know what buttons to push, and when and why you should push them. To preserve your site’s quality it’s important to know and understand a few things. That’s where the developer should help as well. On a typical site, there will only be a handful of “elements” — headings, list-types, paragraphs, quotes, etc. — that you’ll want to use on a somewhat regular basis so it’s not an overwhelming amount of information. You can do it. You will be empowered. Tools are useless without knowing how to use them.
What you don’t want to hear is that your developer will be there for you to later find out they didn’t mean it. It will be impossible to tell, but if you get positive responses to the other questions, you’ll probably be in good hands. You should be given a couple of hours of training as a part of the package and the developer should be enthusiastic about showing you all the cool stuff and getting you started. Expect to have to do your homework. You should expect to have to pay for support after ‘X’ amount of time, though.
In Closing
You’ll have your own questions, of course, but these questions should help you determine whether your questions need to even be asked. These questions will help you discover whether or not you’re going to get the best you can get, or something less.
Obviously the responses do depend on a degree of honesty from the developer you interview. But these questions — these examples — should be revealing enough to let you know, without too much doubt, if you’re in good hands or if you shouldn’t be feeling completely confident with the candidate.
Customer service, as a general rule it seems, is less than adequate nowadays, but that doesn’t seem to stop the sales department from charging full steam ahead. Promises of support are suspicious. It’s actions that count. For now, though, with the help of this article, you can see if answers can count, too.
Read More…
If you want more on this subject, our friends at Doepud Web Design advice us of these Questions to ask before hiring a web designer. It’s a fine companion article really worth checking out.
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