We're talking to a number of web design firms who have submitted proposals to do our website. We are going to schedule some conference calls with them and want to know the most important questions to ask them. Here are a few that I've come up with, any suggestions?

-In addition to the final invoice, do your clients receive any report of allocation of man hours that were spent for each major task?

-How do you justify your server hosting requirements for our website proposal?

-Will hosting be done through your company, or do we deal the web host on our own?
(I want to know if they'll get a cut of our monthly hosting fee)

-What type of CMS will be used?

-What do you do to ensure your websites meet W3C standards?

-How do you ensure your websites function across all browser platforms?

-Do you propose an outsourced Ecommerce transaction system, or do you provide your own? Please detail.

-Do you outsource any of the graphic design or programming?

-For our project will your designs be based on templates, or are they created from scratch?

-Throughout the design phase, will we have the opportunity to see drafts and give our input?

how many time will you spend making my website ( CMS ) ?

how much will you charge ( if you will ) for future modifications ?

I don't know what kind of business you're in, so this may not fully apply to you, but often times I see clients lose focus on what's really valuable, with all kinds of "technical" details, because it's something they think they can relate to and understand.

Like: "Do you outsource any of the graphic design or programming?" -- why is that important?

Wouldn't it be more interesting to ask: "What ideas for features, functionality or similar does your company have for making our site stand out from our competition?"

.. There are heaps more questions, it all depends on what kind of business you're in, what the site is about and what it is supposed to do.

Take a minute and think about what's really important. While the technical stuff naturally is important, it's more secondary.

I'm glad to see you are asking the technical questions, because I think the technical expertise provides a good baseline from which you can begin to give companies more serious consideration. I think it is very important to ask about standards, about cross-browser and cross-platform functionality, about accessibility/usability from a visitor standpoint and a legal standpoint and questions about the incorporation of applications you already know will be needed (CMS).

I think you use these questions to cull the group; as far as I'm concerned, if you're not receiving satisfactory answers on these baseline questions, you've eliminated those contenders from what is obviously a more serious Web project. If your developers are not meeting the basic industry standards for development, they're not playing professional ball. Keep in mind, you've probably upped your budget's bottom line considerably as well, or perhaps it was set realistically from the start, in which case, good for you!

From there, I think the decision lies less with answers to questions and more with the types of questions your potential developers ask you. Are they asking questions that get down to the root of your business objectives? Are they digging beyond the surface? The surface stuff is "what colors do you like," "what does your logo look like," etc. The real issues are things like what are you trying to accomplish as a business in x period of time? What are your greater marketing objectives? How do you see your new site furthering your objectives, and if you haven't thought about this, the developers should be prepared to speak from their own experiences on how their work can enhance your business, help you broaden your market, increase revenue, make processes easier for your customers, etc. A good developer knows his/her real customers are the people who are going to use the site, not the person who's paying to have it made.

To recap, I think once you've decided a group of developers has the technical expertise you demand, a large part of your final decision comes down to how well those developers understand your business, how well they can express this to you, and how well they've convinced you they can express this in the creation of your site.

Originally posted by the_pm
I'm glad to see you are asking the technical questions, because I think the technical expertise provides a good baseline from which you can begin to give companies more serious consideration. I think it is very important to ask about standards, about cross-browser and cross-platform functionality, about accessibility/usability from a visitor standpoint and a legal standpoint and questions about the incorporation of applications you already know will be needed (CMS).

I think you use these questions to cull the group; as far as I'm concerned, if you're not receiving satisfactory answers on these baseline questions, you've eliminated those contenders from what is obviously a more serious Web project. If your developers are not meeting the basic industry standards for development, they're not playing professional ball. Keep in mind, you've probably upped your budget's bottom line considerably as well, or perhaps it was set realistically from the start, in which case, good for you!

From there, I think the decision lies less with answers to questions and more with the types of questions your potential developers ask you. Are they asking questions that get down to the root of your business objectives? Are they digging beyond the surface? The surface stuff is "what colors do you like," "what does your logo look like," etc. The real issues are things like what are you trying to accomplish as a business in x period of time? What are your greater marketing objectives? How do you see your new site furthering your objectives, and if you haven't thought about this, the developers should be prepared to speak from their own experiences on how their work can enhance your business, help you broaden your market, increase revenue, make processes easier for your customers, etc. A good developer knows his/her real customers are the people who are going to use the site, not the person who's paying to have it made.

To recap, I think once you've decided a group of developers has the technical expertise you demand, a large part of your final decision comes down to how well those developers understand your business, how well they can express this to you, and how well they've convinced you they can express this in the creation of your site.

Very well the_pm, this is something we might know, but we always rush to execute(many people) without thinking for a minute or a week!

It happens to me so many times that it is not funny no more!

Originally posted by the_pm
I'm glad to see you are asking the technical questions, because I think the technical expertise provides a good baseline from which you can begin to give companies more serious consideration. I think it is very important to ask about standards, about cross-browser and cross-platform functionality, about accessibility/usability from a visitor standpoint and a legal standpoint and questions about the incorporation of applications you already know will be needed (CMS).

I think you use these questions to cull the group; as far as I'm concerned, if you're not receiving satisfactory answers on these baseline questions, you've eliminated those contenders from what is obviously a more serious Web project. If your developers are not meeting the basic industry standards for development, they're not playing professional ball. Keep in mind, you've probably upped your budget's bottom line considerably as well, or perhaps it was set realistically from the start, in which case, good for you!

From there, I think the decision lies less with answers to questions and more with the types of questions your potential developers ask you. Are they asking questions that get down to the root of your business objectives? Are they digging beyond the surface? The surface stuff is "what colors do you like," "what does your logo look like," etc. The real issues are things like what are you trying to accomplish as a business in x period of time? What are your greater marketing objectives? How do you see your new site furthering your objectives, and if you haven't thought about this, the developers should be prepared to speak from their own experiences on how their work can enhance your business, help you broaden your market, increase revenue, make processes easier for your customers, etc. A good developer knows his/her real customers are the people who are going to use the site, not the person who's paying to have it made.

To recap, I think once you've decided a group of developers has the technical expertise you demand, a large part of your final decision comes down to how well those developers understand your business, how well they can express this to you, and how well they've convinced you they can express this in the creation of your site.

Yes.

A good question to separate the men from the boys would be to ask about federal Section 508 accessibility standards and how their sites display in text-based browsers and screen readers.

You can measure their etiquette, responsiveness, and expertise, knowledge and level of technical skills for correcting actions by testing their quality of work with an issue related to your requirements after getting answer of all your questions during your conference call.

See the time of responses by them and judge yourself whether they are well competent to resolve that issue and enable to reach your perfection level as per your expectation or not. I think this way you can judge the effectiveness and capability of the web designer/programmer especially when you are taking outsource support.

Once you’re confident in their capability and offerings, you can be able to take a good decision.

simple questions.

what is your charge .

Would you CSS to design the site?
If yes, accept them else reject.

How much time would you take to design the site?

Would like to see their portfolio,

Yes, he’ll say every thing well and he is capable too for that and very prompt in service.
Do you're going to believe on that?
But what is the guarantee about that and so they are expertise at that level and overall they are reliable and capable too.
How are you going to measure that?

Originally posted by spechackers
simple questions.

what is your charge .

Would you CSS to design the site?
If yes, accept them else reject.

How much time would you take to design the site?

Would like to see their portfolio, With all due respect:

1. When the first question you ask is about price, you've already imposed a budget-based limitation on what a potential developer can do for you. Do yourself a favor and find out the depth and range of skills before bringing price into the picture. You run the risk of biasing yourself against services that might be greatly beneficial for you by worrying about price before anything else. Price is a big concern, a huge factor, no doubt. But it generally won't help the discovery communication process if you're asking what the compensatory value of a service is without even knowing anything about the intrinsic value of that service.

2. Why accept someone just because they know how to use CSS? There are people who write God-awful markup using CSS. Eliminating tables as a layout device is just one small issue that arises in the course of designing properly. Setting the baseline at whether someone uses CSS or not tells you way too little about their ability.

I would ask not only how long the job will take but also for a timeline of each stage of the development that you would expect them to come back to you for input.

If the designers are also offering to host, I would want to see this treated as a seperate contract detailing what they intend to provide not just in terms of space and cost, but also service levels.

Make sure that anyone you talk to understands your business and your requirements. Too many designers try to do a "one size fits all" site which, in my opinion, is the wrong way around. For that reason, I would not be asking whether they will use this tool or that tool (eg. cms - unless that is a clear requirement of yours) - they need to know what it is that you need, not how they can fit your requirements into a particular method of creating the site.

I would also ask to be shown examples of work they have done for businesses similar to yours. Again, this is a good way to find out if they understand what your business is.

its not what you do, its how you do it... have a nice portfolio can go a long way..even if its just sample sites....