Top 11 Questions to Ask Before Building a Website

Let’s talk about building a website again. Yes, it wasn’t too long ago that we covered some factors that play into the cost of a website redesign. In that piece, we talked about some of the factors that can affect the cost of your website. Sure, we gave some awesome details, but let’s rewind to even before that.

The initial concepting of a site is where most information needs to be gathered. You and your team will need to sit and lay out everything that you want this site to do and show. But, you might not know exactly what tools will accomplish those wants.

If you’re outsourcing your site to an agency, you’ll want to ask questions of both you and their team to get all the information you possibly can. Read below to find out what questions to ask before building a website.

Questions To Ask Yourself

What Are the Goals of the Project?

Yes, you want to build a website, but do you need an eCommerce piece? Will there be online chats/customer service? You want to lay out all of your needs and wants before you even move on to the next step.

What’s Your Budget?

Once you’ve laid the groundwork, you can see how much money you have to put into the site. A great site with every integration that you can think of can run you well over $100k. But, you can still make a great site with a budget well below that.

How Much Time Do You Have to Invest?

Labor costs will play into everything. It doesn’t matter if you hire one person who’s solely dedicated to building everything or pull different people in from all over the organization to each have a different part, you need to know the time.

What Are Your Expectations Around the Overall Timeline?

Website projects can span many months depending on everything that you need. It never hurts to plan too early, plus short, aggressive deadlines can force agencies to take shortcuts and make more mistakes.

Questions to Ask the Agency

How Do They Run Their Process?

You’ll want to know how they go from initial concept to finished product and get details for every step in between. If it seems like they’re more focused on making something that looks cool as opposed to a site that accomplished your goals, you have a serious problem.

What Technologies Do They Use?

There are a lot of great web development and integration tools that can make amazing websites. There are also some cheap ones, so make sure you find out what they use and do a little of your own research.

What Services Are Included?

Do they just build a site or do they put best practices into design, development, content writing, SEO, ongoing support, training, etc. How much do these cost? Are they extra? Get a good idea of what you’re paying for and what you’re still missing.

What Are the Recurring Costs to Maintain the Site?

The site will need to be updated with new content and will need to be reevaluated to make sure that it can be found by internet searchers.

Do I Own the Website?

You’ll want to know if you’ll have full access to the site or if you’ll need to contact the agency for everything.

Does the Agency Use Outside Teams or Do Everything In-House?

This ties back to the previous point. If you need to change something and they outsource their work, it might delay things getting accomplished.

What Are Examples of Work That the Agency Has Done for Similar Businesses?

Every business is unique and needs to be treated as such. When the agency busts out their portfolio, save yourself the time and ask for something they did for a company in your industry.

Questions to Ask Us

There isn’t a website concept or idea that we haven’t heard of and executed for a client. Call us today, we’re the digital agency partner that can build the site that suits your business in all of the right ways.