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4 Questions a Good Web Designer Will Ask
One day I will write an article on “Great Web Design Clients”, but for now I want to give you some insight into what you should expect from a GREAT web designer and how to avoid a disappointing or bad experience! Actually, it all really depends on what you want from your web designer. Do you just need them to create a pretty web site, or do you need them to design for a high conversion rate? Let’s start with 4 questions a good web shop will ask you before any design discussion happens.
1. What do you want your website to do?
The road to a successful web design experience always starts with a plan from you, the client. If you walk into a web shop without a plan, you are doomed to fail, so get your ducks in a row first and have a plan. You need a designer who can design for your plan, and that should be one of the first questions they ask. Unfortunately, most web designers don’t care if you have a plan, they just want to know how many pages you need and what colors you like. If this tops the list of questions they ask, walk away. Somewhere out there is a web shop that truly cares about the success of your website and needs to know more than the superficial details; these are the folks you should trust.
2. Who is your target market?
Good designers target the intended market. If you were trying to sell fishing lures to men, I wouldn’t care if your favorite color was pink, I wouldn’t use it to design your site. I want to know who your target market is, and I want to design for that audience. For that reason, a good web shop will ask you who your target market or audience is. If they don’t, then how will they design for that group? By design, I don’t only mean color, it goes without saying that included in design is navigation, layout, writing style, content, and a host of other things. Your web designer should really care about knowing your audience, because it is essential to the success of your site.
3. How do you plan to engage your audience?
Engage your audience? What does that mean? I can hear you say it now. Realize this, most websites throughout the internet are what I like to call “ghost towns”. People go there, nothing is happening, they might look around for a few seconds, and then leave never to return again. What you must understand is that people don’t care about who you are, what award you won or what certification you have. People are selfish! All they care about is themselves and how you can meet their needs. If your website cannot provide what they want in seconds, they will leave and never come back. Good web designers understand this, so they build websites that engage the target audience in some way. The goal is to get the audience to click something. As a designer, if I don’t start with that in my mind, then I am just building you a ghost town.
4. What is your idea of a successful conversion rate?
Forget how many hits you had on your website last week, it means nothing! You don’t want “hits” you want unique visitors. And better than that, you want those unique visitors to do something on your site. You want them to call you, contact you, click an affiliate link, purchase a product, or whatever it is your site does. In other words, you want a successful conversion rate. To calculate your conversion rate, you take the number of unique visitors divided by those who took action on your site. A good web designer will help you define what those actions are and will design to get people to take action. He will design for the highest conversion rate possible.
A great web design shop should be worried about the success of your website more than it’s beauty. Aesthetics should only be a derivative of your overall goals and a good web designer will understand this. At StopDev we are more worried about what your audience wants than what you want, and as nasty as that sounds, it is the key element in you having a successful website. In the words of Jerry Maguire, “help me, help you”!
