Everybody seems to have figured out that they really need to have a website for their business these days.
Excellent.
So they go out and throw thousands of dollars at the first person they don't understand. Because that means that person really knows what they're doing, right? RIGHT?
Not so excellent.
Then they figure out that they've made a mistake and are genuinely eager to correct it. To do that, they need another webmaster. But they still have no idea how to choose one and they don't want to make the same mistake again. Plus they blew their budget on the first webmaster. So they decide that they're trapped and live with whatever mess they're original webmaster made.
Very not excellent.
If you choose a doctor, you know this person has, at a minimum, graduated from medical school and received a license. If you choose a lawyer, you know this person has, at a minimum, graduated from law school and passed the bar. Webmasters don't have any minimum requirements. Anyone can announce that they are one. So, how do you choose?
You Are Not Stupid
New clients often tell me how stupid they are because they don't know anything about how websites work. As if I could do their jobs!
There is no reason to expect that you should somehow simply have an understanding of website design. It's a skill like any other. The people who know how to do it sat down and learned it, just like you learned the skills necessary for your job. Your webmaster should be able and willing to explain what they are doing and why in terms you can understand. You are not required to blindly accept anything they say and sign anything they hand you. You don't need to understand all the technical details of how everything works, but they should be able to clearly explain what a domain name is and help you choose a good one. They should also be able to explain the benefit their choices have for you, not just for them.
When you ask questions of your webmaster, you should get answers, not technical obfuscations. Say you ask:
Will I have to check another email address?
Bad Webmaster: Gobbledygook flux capacitor temporal shift tardis YOU MUST GIVE ME $500 MORE DOLLARS TO SAVE YOU FROM THE EMAILS gobbledygook blarg.
Good Webmaster: Not if you don't want to. I can set you up a professional email address, but forward the messages to your GMail account so you only have to look in one place.
Retain Control
Not owning your website address (domain name) is like not owning your business name. Do not sign on with a webmaster who does not give you complete control and ownership over your domain name and your hosting account. In the best case, even the most professional and qualified webmaster can get hit by a bus. In the worst case, your webmaster may turn out to be both incompetent and vindictive. If your webmaster wants to create a hostage situation, walk away. Period. Before committing to a webmaster and/or a hosting service, make sure of the following:
- Your domain is registered in your name, not the webmaster's.
- The email address for the domain admin contact is yours, not the webmaster's.
- You have the login and password to access a domain management area where you can change nameservers and/or transfer the domain. You don't need to know what to do with this information, but you must have it available if you want someone else to be able to help you.
- Your hosting account is in your name, uses your email address, and is on your credit card, not in the webmaster's name or on their reseller account. This is crucial if you ever need to get account information from the hosting company. I recommend not using a webmaster that hosts sites on their own server.
- You have the login and password to access your hosting account. You don't need to know
what to do with this information, but you must have it available if you
want someone else to be able to help you.
In general, websites follow the money and the primary email address. make sure that both are yours.
Your website should also be yours. Webmaster will often put a small credit for themselves on sites they build. This is okay, but you should be able to remove it if you wish. The webmaster should also not claim copyright for any content you've written yourself or any artwork created for you. If content or artwork has been licensed from elsewhere, you should have a copy of those licenses for reference if needed.
Get What You Pay For
Certain large companies have taken to sending salespeople out to small businesses to pressure the owners into paying hundreds of dollars per month for a poorly designed web page. They claim that they are doing huge amounts of search engine optimization (SEO) work and suchlike for this money.
This is ridiculous. They are doing no such thing. They are certainly not doing hundreds of dollars per month worth of work. A well-made website with good SEO work built into it will do just as well or better.
For most small businesses, shared hosting is fine, comes with all the tools you need, and costs about $10 per month or less. If you are paying more than that per month, something is wrong.
In general, your webmaster should not be collecting monthly maintenance fees from you unless there are some very specific tasks they perform on your site every month. For example, if they update your calendar of events each month, then a reasonable monthly fee is fine. Otherwise, you shouldn't be billed unless you ask them to do something for you.
Competence Counts
Websites aren't just pretty. They need to work. It can be difficult to tell if a webmaster is technically competent from the outside, but there are some clues you can look for. Ask them for links to sites they've built. When you look at them, don't concentrate so much on whether you like blue or not. Look for signs that this person knows what they are doing.
- Do things line up and appear to be the same size?
- Are the fonts consistent,or do they change at random?
- Are images scaled correctly, or do they look stretchy or distorted?
- Are there typos?
- Do links go to the right places, or are they broken?
Even people who don't know anything about websites know they want to show up on Google. Determining if your potential webmaster knows about good SEO is trickier, but there are some clues you can look for.
- Check the page titles by hovering your mouse over the browser tab. They should all be different and contain reasonable search terms for the site.
- If you have a browser that will show image properties, make sure that the images have alt tags that contain reasonable search keywords.
- Look for large blocks of text that are actually pictures of text. Search engines can't read these and a good webmaster will avoid them in favor of actual text unless the client insists on them for some reason.
You should also ask your webmaster if they speak any web development programming or scripting languages. You're looking for answers like: Javascript, PHP, Perl, Python, AJAX, ASP, etc. You don't need to know what these are, but it's tough to build a good website these days without getting into at least a little bit of coding, so your webmaster should have some experience in this area.
Providing Guidance
Ultimately, the decisions about your website will be yours, but a good webmaster will let you know if you are making a choice that will cost you in terms of usability or search engine rankings. As a test, tell your potential webmaster that you want the name of your business to be in very large text on every page and that you want it to blink. If they don't at least suggest that you rethink that decision, you need to talk to someone else.
There's more, of course, but it's hard to check for unless you already know what you're doing. Hopefully, this information will help you choose the right person to get your business online.
