Interview Guide
We’ve written this guide to help small businesses make well-informed decisions when hiring web professionals to build a website. The guide centers around 10 simple questions designed to test the knowledge of web standards and general industry best practices. We’ve included examples of good and bad responses to these questions in addition to a glossary to help explain potentially unfamiliar terms. Our intention is to arm small businesses with the information they need to hire qualified web professionals to create good well-built websites.
We recommend you make yourself familiar with the different questions before interviewing potential web suppliers. You’ll get the best sense of a web professional or agency by conducting this interview face-to-face.
Before any meetings you should always write a brief, detailing what you’re looking for from your website. During the interview you can use the questions we have provided as you feel is appropriate. Don’t be afraid of technical terms, if you don’t understand anything just ask.
If you have any questions on how to use this guide, please do get in touch. We aim to improve this guide over time, so all feedback is valuable.
- Can you walk me through your development process and our role in that process?
- How will you ensure my website meets my customers’ needs & that they get the best possible experience when they visit my website?
- What will you do to help people find my website?
- Who will write the content for my website, and how will it be kept up-to-date after launch?
- Will my website look the same on everyone’s computer?
- How will you make my site accessible to all users?
- Will my customers be able to use my website on their iPhone/iPad/mobile device?
- What technologies & techniques will you use to construct my website?
- What sort of costs should we expect, and at what stages will you bill us?
- After the website is finished, will we own copies of the source code and asset files?