When looking for a web designer for a startup business or personal website on a limited budget you should consider hiring a freelancer or small web design firm that specializes in one on one designer direct services like Glenn Website Design. In order to do this, you need to have a list of interview questions for a web designer.
This is a list of questions you should ask along with how we here at Glenn Website Design would answer you.
How many years have you been designing websites?
Glenn has been doing web design for 20 years. Many of our website designs have been for self-owned, intranets, or private businesses.
What types of websites have you built, big business, small business, personal, eCommerce, interactive?
We avoid doing corporate websites. They are too complex and often involve other designers outside of our firm working on the project. Our preference is to work with small to medium-size businesses. We have completed several eCommerce designs with as many as 2000 products. Doing animations and interactive designs is fun but we hesitate to use them very much because we love FAST responsive designs even better. The more you put on a web page the slower it becomes. The file sizes for animations or excessive high-quality graphics can easily exceed the rest of the page requirements in one item. Google puts a lot of importance on responsive designs that load fast on mobile devices.
Can I view your portfolio?
Yes, https://glennwebsitedesign.com/portfolio/
Are the websites you build successful at bringing in new business?
Yes for sure. Glenn Website Design is owned by Glenn Madden. He has been living off of the internet from his own business both web design and others such as Glenn Furniture for 20 years. If you do a search for “Glenn Furniture” or Glenn Website Design” you will find that Google loves our brand and Glenn Madden.
What is your basic plan to make my website work for me?
That answer will be based on input we receive from the client.
Can you provide a timeline?
A standard business website presence of 6 pages with us providing nearly all the content and graphics, 2 weeks. An eCommerce website same timeline for basic layout. If you have us doing the products it will take much longer. One product with research and content can take all day to prepare.
If I do not like your design do you offer guarantees?
We offer a 100% refund policy. If you do not like what we are doing and decide to use someone else we take down our development services.
How many times will you make the revisions I require?
After we feel the website is complete we give you one month to make as many revisions as necessary. But if 5 years from then you need something simple changed like a phone number we will take care of revisions that take less than 15 minutes for FREE. If you use our hosting we include regular updates and make sure your website is running at all times.
Will I be able to talk directly to the designer?
That is something we believe strongly in. There is nothing more annoying than to call up for service and get a robot, automated answering service, or someone that only schedules appointments. With Glenn Website Design we do our best to monitor the phone 24 hours a day with a skilled designer that can take care of your need right then.
Is SEO included?
The content we create for you is researched for long-tailed keyword phrases from doing a competitor’s analysis. But there is a lot more to SEO that can be done in a website build. SEO requires building your identity across many channels including social media and other sites linking to yours that are industry-related.
Is Marketing included?
The only marketing we include is initial submission of the pages of your website to Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
What does it cost for everything I need to make my website bring in the business?
Not trying to keep you in the dark but in many cases, we need to evaluate what you require to price out what is required. To give you an idea we have broken down some common services with various package pricing. Web Design Pricing
Can I watch the site as it is being built daily?
Yes, you can. We prefer to develop the website live on its final location address. This saves us time and allows you to monitor our progress. You do not need to worry about a new website getting miss indexed for development. It takes time, weeks for Google and other search engines to find new websites. Plus until we submit a sitemap they will probably never discover it. That is the last thing we do after you approve the website. We submit the site pages and sitemap to Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Do you offer a special breakdown of pricing should I need upgrades, more web pages, additional SEO, or marketing services.
We are very fair when it comes to our services. Our web design pricing list should give you a good idea of what additional items would cost you.
Should You use a Freelancer or Cheap Web Design Company?
If you choose to use a smaller design firm like ours or a freelancer be sure to vet them in full. Use the list of questions and examples we gave as a guideline. It will save you a lot of money and in many cases, you will end up with a better website, and better service than you would get with a million-dollar firm. With Glenn Website Design you always get what you paid for and more.
Large design firms sometimes have resources for SEO in the way of high-quality links small firms and freelancers do not have.
If you are looking at building a website for a new startup business you should not use a high-end agency unless you have huge pockets full of money.
- prices are super expensive
- services are often slow based on queue
- hidden costs, they sell you exactly what they say, no extras
- not always forthcoming on everything you need
- their goal is to sell you each service they offer over time
- the services or sometimes outsourced to India
For a more in-depth list of what a web design company needs to know in order to build a website for you, review our web design questionnaire.