Unless you’re a web designer you probably have a lot of questions or misconceptions about how a website is built, paid for, maintained, etc.

Here are 5 questions to ask me when we first meet.

TIME

How long will this take?

Obviously you don’t want this project to carry on for as long as your in business, so you probably have a target date in mind. After a little digging I should be able to give you a fairly accurate estimate on just how long it will take and I also should be able to point out key milestones in the project.

PROGRAMMING

Do you use accepted web design standards?

I could easily go into a long list of ‘geek’ things that would blow your mind, but it is important to know that we do our very best to adhere to current ‘accepted’ standards. As an example web sites use to be designed using “tables” which really are nothing more than a glorified Excel spreadsheet. This really isn’t an accepted format for designing anymore, so we stick to the more common practices in design these days.

SEO

Will my site receive traffic?

Without a doubt just about any web site that is built properly should receive traffic, but I will admit right up front that I cannot guarantee traffic. Sure there are those out there touting lots and lots of ways to increase your SEO (search engine optimization), but you have to be careful with many of these people because they have a tendency to not follow legit tactics. I’ll put in every bit of my knowledge to get you traffic, but you also have to remember it’s up to you to market it as well.

MAINTENANCE

Who updates the site?

Well that’s entirely up to you. We offer solutions where you can update the content, photos, text, images, etc. all on your own or we can do it for you based on an hourly charge. Now this is not to say that some ‘geek’ stuff might have to be done from time-to-time and you’ll need to call on us to get it taken care of, but often times that happens less than once a year.

YOUR TEAM

Even though you’ll always be dealing with me, that’s not to say I don’t bring on other people from time-to-time. As much as I would love to know every single thing about web design, copywriting, marketing, etc. there are those moments where the left side of the brain starts arguing with the right side of the brain. Right then and there it’s in the best interest of you my client to just hire someone to reach the goal.

So that’s it, a simple little 5 questions to ask Gonink when we first meet and discuss your project.