ConnectWhat to do before you hire your website designer
You’re in the market for a new website, or a website makeover/overhaul.
What should you know before you begin the process of design & development, or outsourcing a company to build your website for you?
1. Website Requirements
Write down the list of design requirements and a separate list for functionality requirements your new website has.
Design requirements will be things like:
- Mobile friendliness
- Existing websites you like the look and feel of
- How you’d like the navigation menus to look like
- If you need specialised landing pages designed (to send your ad clicks to)
Functionality requirements will be things like:
- An e-commerce & shopping cart system
- Multiple contact forms
- Multi-author editing
- Website owners can easily create photo galleries
- Website owners can create complex page layouts
- Website owners can edit SEO meta information
- Website owners can create blog posts
2. Website Platform
Once you know your requirements, it’s time to look at what website platform should be used.
| Platform | Managed Hosting | Self Hosting | Editor | Complex Layouts | Ease of Setup | Ease of Use | Developer Required? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drupal | Yes | built-in | Yes | Difficult | Medium | Yes | |
| Ghost | Yes | built-in | No | Easy | Easy | Yes | |
| Joomla | Yes | built-in | Yes | Medium | Medium | Yes | |
| Magento | Yes | built-in | Yes | Difficult | Medium | Yes | |
| Shopify | Yes | built-in | Yes | Medium | Medium | No | |
| Squarespace | Yes | built-in | Yes | Medium | Medium | No | |
| Static HTML | Yes | your choice | Yes | Easy | Medium | Yes | |
| Wix | Yes | built-in | Yes | Easy | Easy | No | |
| Weebly | Yes | built-in | Yes | Easy | Easy | No | |
| WordPress.org | Yes | built-in | Yes | Easy | Easy | No | |
| WordPress.com | Yes | built-in | Yes | Easy | Easy | No |
3. Map out your Content
Writing for the web is very different. You need to map out what content will be needed, and what your audience will be looking for in the future.
A good tool to use for keyword research is UberSuggest.
4. Build
If your website platform does not require a developer, you can begin signing up for hosting for self-hosted platforms, or sign up @ the managed hosting platform.
If your website does require a developer, a great market place to find good quality reasonably priced developers is Upwork.
5. Need Support or Troubleshooting?
Insight Digital has 25 years experience in website development, and can normally handle your website issues.
If you’d like some support, simply contact us below.
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Grab the free e-book "How to Write Copy That People AND Search Engines LOVE"
If you would like some more information on how to leverage the latest trends for your business, contact Steve at insight.web@insightdesign.com.au or call
.