How To Choose The Right Web Developer For You:

They do have some merit, but it comes down to what are your plans and goals for your website? What are you trying to achieve from it?

Like anything, there are pros and cons.

The upside is that they’re cheap. However the negatives are considerable. Here are just a few of them:

1. You may be limited in what you can do with the site.
2. You may be limited with the number of pages you can add
3. The features and functionality - like adding a shopping cart, photos or blogs - may be limited.
4. You may not own the website in its entirety.
5. You may receive little or no back up support if things go wrong.

Yes it is a risk.  The first impression people get about your business is from your website so it’s important it creates the right impression.  There’s so much competition out there so you have to see what standards your competitors are setting.  If your site pales in comparison, then chances are you should steer clear of an off the shelf package.

The one and potentially only advantage of getting a website developed overseas is it’s cheaper.

However, the disadvantages are many and include:

1. It’s difficult to develop a good ongoing working relationship with a developer based overseas, especially when you need to update your site.
2. The time difference can be a problem when communicating with developers living overseas.
3. Your needs may change. If you want to change the site as you go along, buying a cheap site off the shelf often won’t allow you any flexibility.
4. You can’t be certain of whom you’re dealing with and how long they will be in business for. If you need helping gaining access to your site or the site goes down, you have less chance of getting immediate help. People think they’ll save money by going offshore but it can be a false economy. When you use an overseas developer, you can lose quality control, consistency in communication and confidence that the site will be well maintained in the future.

The relationship you have with your developer will hopefully be long and fruitful so it pays to choose that person carefully.  As such, it’s like choosing a life partner – it’s not quite that serious of course, but it’s important in that you could be communicating with them for many years to come.

You also need to have the trust so that you can bring up and resolve any problems, concerns or issues as they arise.

The designer will put together and design the aesthetics of the website - where your logo sits, the images you use, the colours – how it’s all structured visually.

The developer will build that site – using code - and make it work technically. The company you choose may have both the designer and developer on board, or they may do just one of those roles and sub contract the other out. When you choose Web D3 as your web developer, you can rest assured that both the web design and development is conducted in house. This is important because it means that the job can be realized more quickly, with less hassle and less fuss.

There is no substitute for honesty.  The best way to manage any conflict is to tell your web developer what you are thinking. Give them a chance to fix it.  Give them even a second chance.  However, if after that they still fail to resolve the issues to your satisfaction, then it’s best to part ways.

You need to be clear about what aspects of the site are yours, what are theirs and any contractual relationship you may have had. Be very careful before signing any contracts with a web developer.  You might think it’s just a standard contract and that everyone signs them but it’s worth reading the fine print as you may discover that the site doesn’t even belong to you!

If communication has broken down completely, speak with your new developer and ask them to ask your previous developer the tough questions or technical challenges that you can’t bring yourself to ask.

One of our specialities is helping disgruntled web owners transfer their sites safely and with minimal down time over to a new host and developer.   Please speak to me if you’d like me to contact your developer on your behalf.  I’d be happy to help.

This is one of the first questions you should be asking any web designer or developer that

you’re looking to deal with. It all comes down to the individual organization and the contract that you signed at the beginning. That’s why it’s best to check what you’re signing or get a web savvy friend to check it for you. When you are a client of Web d3, you will own the entire design for that site and I will not use that design for any other client.

The first step is to establish in your own mind whether they understand you and your business and to look at the work they’ve done. Read their testimonials. Maybe even ask if you can contact their clients. Once you start it’s difficult to turn back so it’s worth doing the due diligence before deciding. Speak to at least two companies to get competitive quotes. If they happily provide you with testimonials, chances are they are proud of their work. If they don’t, well that speaks for itself.

There are three major components to a website project as a whole.

1. The design development.
2. The building of the website.
3. Making the website live, which means publishing it on the internet.

From the design point of view I start off with a pen and paper. I develop concepts and present them to a client. Their chosen concept is then converted into graphical visual format.

Typically, it would be a minimum of four weeks for the design process, the building and making it live, but every job is different. The content, or the words for their website, is generally where the project can be delayed.  Often clients write their own content which takes time, and can add weeks to a project.

Providing colour palettes and examples are fantastic. I also get my clients to send me a list of websites they like and don’t like.  This gives me a good picture of how the client sees their brand and how they would like to be portrayed on the internet.  It’s a very subjective area so it’s good to know what the client has in mind before I start working.  It saves everyone time, money and effort this way.

I try to avoid that happening by taking a comprehensive brief at the start. If I ask enough questions and drill down far enough, I can generally get a good idea of what the client wants.

I always provide at least three design options to a client when we start a project, so they can see three completely different looks that I envisage for their website. The process continues until the client is happy with the chosen concept.

I would say as a minimum, your website should have three core pages. This would be the same for any organization:

1. The home page - this is an introduction to the business, an outline of the products and services provided, plus a history of the business and staff profiles.
2. A products and services page.
3. A contact page, telephone number, address and email contact.

For this basic website you’d be looking at around $1500 - $2000. It would get you a custom-designed website with a look and feel specifically tailored for your organization.

The list is endless. There’s:

1. Online shopping carts to sell your products.
2. Email newsletter systems.
3. Blogs
4. Photo galleries
5. 5 ) Membership sites
6. Surveys

…and much more. The list is almost endless.

What’s important is that people have a good think about what they’re likely to need in the future. That way I can build the site with that in mind. It also means that they only pay for what they need now but the site can be constructed in a way so that should they want to add on modules later on, they can do so without any major hassles.

It becomes costly for everyone when the client (and the web developer) don’t think ahead. Problems occur when a client buys a basic site and doesn’t allow for their business to grow, expand or offer a different range of products. This can require a major site redesign and can be really expensive.

I always try to ‘future proof’ my clients’ sites so that they don’t run into this hassle later on.

After the briefing conversation, I give my clients a quote. This is very comprehensive and outlines exactly what they’re going to get for the price quoted, and what is additional, should they want it.

A quote should include things like hosting costs, plus what it will cost to send bulk emails if a client wants an email system. This is a real sore point for some people – they buy an email package and only later realise that the developer charges them an arm and a leg for sending those emails out. It’s unfair to the client so it should be a key question you ask if email is a big part of your business.

I provide a full costing so clients can see what the overall project will cost them.   I then break down the costs into modules so that the client only pays for the functionality they need at the time.  That way they’re not up for a big chunk early on when the site is just being launched.  When the site has been going for a while and the business is up and running, then we can add the extra functions on – this means the payments can be staged over a series of months, maybe even years, depending on the project.

There are three things that can pop up as unexpected costs:

1. Hosting:  this is fee you pay for a company – often a 3^rd party that the developer engages – for your site to ‘live’ on a server somewhere.  It’s in a separate, secure location that can support large amounts of traffic coming to your site.
   
   This makes your site publicly available so it’s pretty important that you choose a company that is reliable, offers good service and is willing to fix it should the site drop out.  This is usually an annual fee.

2. Domain Name: this is the fee you pay to buy your URL, or web address for your website eg .www.webd3.com.au is my URL/domain name.  Every website will have their own unique domain name.  This fee is payable generally every two years.  It’s a bit like rent – you have to keep paying this year after year to reserve and protect your web name.  For my clients, I offer free hosting and domain name registration for the first year.

3. Support:  the level of support your developer is willing to give can be an extra cost you might not have accounted for.  Ask your developer what they charge for support as this could be an additional cost.

A content management system (or CMS) allows the client to change the content of their website at any time themselves without having to consult the developer. I always include a CMS in my base package so that people can decide if they want to use it later on. It’s important to think about this because if you let the web developer do the content management, you will be paying a fee every time you want to change some text be it a price, a location, a date, or even just a comma!

Learning how to use a CMS is really quite simple – and I offer training for all my clients. I would liken it to using Microsoft Word – so if you can use that, you can use my CMS. No technical knowledge is needed.

I do use Joomla and I prefer it because it’s what’s called an ‘Open Source’ CMS, which means there’s no software to purchase, and no ongoing licence fees to maintain your website.  The benefit of using Open Source is that it’s not restricted to copyright, so a developer can modify the system quite quickly and easily to suit the customer’s specific requirements without worrying about copyright.   Joomla would be one of the most widely used CMS on the internet.

Some online shopping systems are designed specifically as shopping carts and that’s all they do. If you’re just selling products and you don’t provide any other information about your business, there are products like that out there.

But one of the systems I use integrates seamlessly with the Joomla CMS so you can have all the pages of your online shopping cart look just like any other page on your site – like the ‘About’ page, or the ‘Contact Us’ page. This means you can have your web store all on the one website that’s seamlessly integrated without taking the customer to a third party outside of your site.

PayPal is an option for which people can pay for their products online using either a credit card or a bank account. It’s cheap to run, and costs less for the owner of the online store in terms of merchant fees. It’s probably the biggest online payment system in the world.

Some people don’t like the fact that there is that slight disconnect between your own website and the actual payment solution in that there is a 3^rd party gateway involved.

Absolutely.  I use the same shopping cart all the time, because it’s got such great flexibility.  However, if someone was just starting out, I’d recommend PayPal unless clients already have merchant facilities.

Like most things in life, you get what you pay for and hosting is no different. If you find cheap hosting, the things to look for are:

1. Where is the host located? Are they in Australia or overseas?
2. Are they a reputable organisation?
3. What are their ratios?
4. How many websites do they have per computer – obviously the more websites they have, the slower it’s going to be. The slower it is, the more potential for problems to arise - not to mention your website becoming unavailable for periods of time.

If your website is a major marketing tool for your business, then you can’t afford to have it down for any amount of time. You know the old expression – if you pay peanuts…

Absolutely. They should find out who they use to host their websites. The client might have someone they’ve used previously or had recommended. Alternatively, the developer can work with another web host of your choice.

If any of my clients’ websites go down, they call me or email me, because I’m their first port of call. I take this aspect of my service very seriously as their websites are often their lifeblood and it’s unacceptable for it to be down for any length of time.

I have a service agreement with my web host and I will work doggedly to fix that problem as soon as I know about it.  Even if they ring me in the wee hours of the morning – that’s okay.   They need their website up and that’s my responsibility.

Absolutely not.

You should be looking for a host that provides at least 98% up time for your website – if you were to calculate that over a year, that’s a down time of minutes over a year. That’s the kind of level of service you should be looking for.

No, they can remain as two separate entities so we can work on their existing website or build a new one, while working with the existing web host. It comes down to preference for the client.

Ultimately it’s the client’s role to provide the content.  It’s difficult to write about your own business when you’re so personally attached to it, so that’s where we can look at engaging a copywriter, whose skill set and job is purely to write content for the website.  I can easily recommend professional copywriters to my clients.   Getting the copywriting done is a really important aspect. Without the words, the site can’t be finished so it can be a real stumbling block if the words/content are not ready.

You’re talking about a page created by software called Flash Animation.  Most people want to get onto a site quickly and they certainly don’t want to be held up by a slow- loading page.  Using Flash Animation can also lead to a fall in search engine rankings because Google can’t read the images and therefore can’t index your content.

I’d offer other options. Flash is a very good tool when used appropriately. So you might offer to build a Flash banner in their website.  Or perhaps it might be quotes or sayings – just to get some activity on the website. But I would still have all that key content below it that people can easily read and so search engines can rank your website appropriately.

There’s a few key factors that go into helping with SEO and rankings within those search engines. The most important one is the content and the words on your page. This is where a client should choose a professional copywriter as they are experts at writing key messages using content-rich key words that get attention. A site needs to be worded and structured in such a way that search engines will pay attention and work towards pushing you up the search results.

My role as a developer in SEO is to build and structure the website, to put the pages together, and to use keywords in the meta tags, or the coding, to assist with search engine rankings. We also work with SEO specialists and can easily refer you to some specialists in this field. I am also happy to work with SEO specialists that the client might already be working with.

Definitely. A good developer should understand what SEO is all about, and know what role they play in achieving the best results for you.

No, they don’t lose their email address. An email address is attached to your domain name, which is your web address, which is also what your website is attached to. If you were to move your website to another host, your domain name, your website and your email address would come with you.

Theoretically? Unlimited. This is a question to ask your web developer or your web host in terms of what they offer.

Yes.  When setting up the website, I’ll set up the initial email address, and give details so that in future if they want to add another email address or change their password or delete an email account it’s possible.

An email package (such as MS Outlook) is a program that allows you to create and send your emails. It runs locally on your own computer, and there are multiple packages out there that are available.

There are also email packages that are a module attached to your website.  This programme interacts with your web host so that it can physically send and receive the emails.   If you plan on sending our bulk emails (over 100) regularly and you want to measure the opening rate etc, it’s best to buy an email package.  I can recommend the best ones to use.

All my packages include a statistics package that’s provided by Google called Analytics.  This allows you to log in, and visually see how your website is performing. It’ll show you things like how many people visited your website in the last month, how long they stayed for, what pages they visited – it’s an invaluable tool and it’s free so everyone with a website should be using it.

Blogs are great on many levels. They’re great ways to communicate with your clients and your target market, and people generally on the internet. Blogs typically get updated – some daily, some weekly, even if it’s once a month. Blogs also helps your search engine rankings, because when search engines come and look at your website, they like things that have changed. It ‘sparks’ their attention and increases your page rank when they find something new.

Yes and it’s what I would class as a very basic module as well. The functionality is built into Joomla by default – it’s just a matter of setting it up correctly so that you’ve got a blog section on your website.  It’s updated via your CMS, you can log in at any time and post a new blog entry.