The following encompasses some aspects of working with a website developer or designer.

If you are looking at having a internet site built as your line of work or private / hobby task, you may employ a professional website designer to attempt the task of making your site for you.

Web design like most other design operations should be thought out before you commence to fabricate the website. Many people ramble into the project process with no concept of what makes for a good functioning web site or what to anticipate from their designer. This often leads to errors being made which can be time consuming and costly to put right in a most cases.

So before you embark on the website project road questions to ask yourself ...

Site

Things to ask for your website developer;

• Is the developer you’ve opted for able and professional using progressive techniques?

• Did the web designer offer you a full notarised, detailed spec and price for the work?

• How balanced is their outlook to your design ideas?

• Do they offer internet search or website marketing services?

• Do they offer keyword discovery services or Google optimisation?

• Are you taken by their solutions for other businesses?

• Does the designer have a maintenance agreement once the site is ?

• Do they have specific support once the project is complete?

• What are the annual fees related with the site?

Questions for you;

• How much can you hope to get for your project budget?

• Have you plan an internet strategy to reach your objectives?

• Did you set any targets?

• Did you look at your competitors?

• Have you got a merchandising budget?

• Do you have your branding and colours and logo's ready?

• Have you got good text content and pictures etc ready to use on the website?

Your web developer should provide you with a thorough detailed proposal complete with a list of website pages and what they are for on the web site. You should require them to have a good competance of SEO and be capable of giving advice on copy or creating the website copy for you if necessary. Do not allow your website designer place an over feature on the appearance of the website, Search engines dont care what your internet site looks like. If you want to feature in Yahoo Bing and Google's search results you will want effective well composed text content, which is updated at times.

Don't get me wrong the look of your site is important. You need to impress your visitors, but if you neglect other regions of the site like providing proper content and accessible navigation your web site likely wont be the achiever you'd hoped it would be.

Employing a good website designer is key to getting the balance right. You trust on their knowledge to return the solutions you want from the web site.

When you are getting the correct responses to the queries above from your web designer then you should be dealing with a competent master who you can bank on to do a good job for you.

Don’t liken their price for the project with people you don’t have the same trust in regardless of the scale of their design business, design is a specialized process and realising the brief is important.

Things you should do

Do your homework before you begin seeking prices. Know the search process on internet search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing there is a lot of information on the internet to help you. Look at the competition on the net, look at how they are marketing their site and look for the words and phrases they are aiming at. You are better leaving this to a pro to research for you but a good grasp of the process involved is good to know. All of this background work will stand to you when you are dealing with prospective web designers.

Website content

When you understand more about what's needed, start putting your website content together. You may have some content already in booklets with product descriptions and so on, a lot of this content can often be re-used and changed a little as needed to be used on your internet site. Pictures should also ready ahead of you begin building the website. Good website developers will offer advice on putting together your website's copy, many offer copywriting services which should be borne in mind in some events.

Website marketing and promotional material

If you are serious about advertising your site put aside a slice of the budget for marketing your web site online. Much of the online marketing and search optimisation tasks are done to compliment a properly constructed web site where it is much more effective. It rarely makes up for the cracks in a poorly made website.

Website marketing can often be done by the web site admin themselves, however it can be a time consuming business so think about using professional services for side of things if time is tight.