When you finally book that consultation with your web developer and start planning out your dream website, a lot is happening in that conversation. The consultation between you as the business owner or manager and the web developer is to outline the goals and desired features and create a plan.
During the planning meeting, both people will discuss the expected questions of domains, hosting, software, and the number of pages. Several other pieces of website planning are good to decide up front, however here are some questions to make sure that you ask your developer.
Who will write the website copy?
To ensure a smooth development plan, you and your developer need to decide who will create the content for your website.
Writing website copy is usually assigned to the Client, the developer, or a digital copywriter. The best option for quality content would be to work with a digital copywriter, however, your developer may offer content services in addition to web development. Your website content is an important part of making your site a success.
Triple Mountain Marketing offers website content services for home, landing, and other product/service pages along with SEO-guided strategy and keyword research. If you and your web developer want to ensure that your website has content that is aligned with your business, use the contact link below to discuss our available copy services. We also contract with other Web Design and Development agencies to provide content services. Please see our Content Services page for more information.
How will website maintenance be handled?
Normally, developers will offer support packages or maintenance plans for your website. It is a good idea to go ahead and decide what that will look like once your website has been built and how much maintenance it will need.
Things like software updates, analytics, and technical support would be included in a support package. If you feel comfortable enough to want to handle your own website maintenance, your developer might advise against it or offer a plan that gives you access to their help if needed.
When you are planning your website development, it is a best practice to set expectations on how post-development support will be handled and by whom.
When do we start?
One of the things that your planning meeting should include is a project timeline. This will most likely be an estimate of how long your developer thinks your project will take to complete. If your developer does not bring this up automatically, ask them when they expect to start on your website.
Developers can be booked out and unable to start new projects for a few weeks. There are many cases where scheduling your website build for a few weeks in the future is beneficial, depending on your business and how prepared you are. Make sure you are on the same page with when they can start and if anything needs to happen beforehand, such as sending the deposit or purchasing the domain name for your website.
