Things to do before you hire a web designer or web design company

This little article could help save your web designer dozens of hours (they will love us for that, and if  we are your web designer, fantastic news for both of us), which will in turn save you money, produce a better website, bring in more customers, and save you money. With all that being offered, how can you afford not to read this!

If you're making a website, or hiring someone to make one for you, decide on the focus of your website, and make a list of what you want it to achieve for your business. Having a plan from the outset saves you money and time.

What type of website do you need, and what do you want it to do?

Decide on a category for your website. Most websites fall into one of the following categories:

Brochure Website, Static Website or Online Business Card

This type of website design will usually consist of a few pages of text with some images describing you business, its products and services, and your contact details. Website designs in this category could also have online contact or quote forms and even image galleries. These sites bring an online awareness for your company, allow your company to be found on search engines, and gives you a platform to let your customers know a little more about your company and what it does.

Content Managed Website - Edit your own content, whenever you like

If you want all the features of a static brochure site, but you like the idea of being able to regularly edit the text as you like, add images to your site, manage your photo gallery, edit your contact and quote forms at will, and generally maintain your site for your customers and the search engines, then a website development with a content managed system is for you. Coconut Graphics has developed a content management system that is easy enough for anyone to use, and powerful enough to produce exceptional results.

A Complete Website Management Solution:
Create and manage content, pages, galleries, events, users,  permissions, images, forms and more.

If you want your site to be something more then a brochure website, if you really want to communicate with your customers on another level. By utilising our Website Management System (also known as a CMS) you can control almost every aspect of your site, and develop and grow it as your company does.

With this solution, you can create and edit unlimited pages and sub pages, manage client and employee events, add image galleries, videos, faq pages, unlimited contact forms, rearrange pages, news articles and blogs with comments and many social networking features.

An eCommerce Website: Sell your products and services online

If your company is ready to start selling their products or services online, then an eCommerce site is for you. You will have all the features avilable on our premium content management system, as well as a host of other goodies. You will be able to add product categories, products, shipping and tax information, manage your customers, their orders, have gift vouchers, discount codes and online/offline payment options.

Industry-Specific Website Application Development

If your company has the need for something specific, whether it be an online reporting system, membership and registration system or anything you think might be worthwhile making an online application for, then Coconut Graphic is here to help. We will work with you to develop a robust, hard working web development tailored to your requirements,

Who is your target audience?

By identifying who your customer are, you will be able to focus your website, and its content, on the people who are going to be viewing it, which in the end, will encourage potential customers to contact you, increasing sales allowing you to grow your business further

What will people be expecting to find when they visit your site?

Will people be going to your site to read more about your company? will the want to view your products and services, maybe even purchase them online, they may want to see your office location, view your conact details, request a quote, or lodge an online contact form.

By thinking about what you need on your website, you will save you time later one, and will allow website design companies to quote more accurately for your website design project. You might want to consider if you want a calendar, a contact form, eCommerce, quote forms etc on your site, and wether you will need/want to edit these on a regular basis, keeping in mind its considerably more expensive to devlop a site you will be able to manage.

How many pages will you need, and how will they be structured?

Before contacting a website design company you should work out how many pages you will require on your website. Once you have done this, you should also create a flowchart outlining the navigation and structure of your website. Start with the major categories, eg: Products, Services, About Us etc, then break them into subcategories, eg: About Us > Our People, Company History, and so on until you have one main idea per page. 

To help show you how to advise website design companies on your website, and its navigation, we have given an example of how we would describe our site.

• Home
• Website Design
  • Brochure Websites
  • Search Engine Optimisation
  • CMS Feature List
  • Create your own website
• Logo Design
  • Compare Logo Design Packages
  • Bronze Logo Design Package
  • Silver Logo Design Package
  • Gold Logo Design Package
  • Platinum Logo Design Package
• Portfolio
  • Logo Design Portfolio
  • Website Design Portfolio
• Resources
• Blog
• Contact

What information do you want to put on each page?

Now you know how your website will be made up, and the pages you wish to have on the site, you can now drill down deeper and start thinking about what is going to be on each of these pages.

You should at least write a general idea of what you would like on each page before talking to a website developer, you can then flesh out this content once development starts, but you should at least get a clear idea in your head what you want to get out of the site, and each page, so the web developer can understand your needs as best they can, giving you the best possible result whilst saving time and money.