Steps to Hiring a Web Designer

By Jane Eckert

After a recent trip to Alberta this past fall visiting agritourism operators, I found that while most farms understand that they need a website, many don’t know where to begin or how to get it done.  So, for those of you wanting to know how to go about hiring a web designer, here are some steps to get it done.

Step 1 - Do your homework.  Get on the Internet and start looking at other farm websites through your state or regional farm associations and see what you like or don’t like about these websites and write it down. You should look at things like the type of navigation bar, the use of photo’s, the ease of getting from one page to another, readability of the content, the colors etc.

Besides looking on farm websites, you could also visit your Chamber of Commerce website and other area tourism websites, and click through to other area business sites. As you take notes—on both the sites you like and those you don’t like as well—you will probably find the name of the company that designed the site.  Soon, you’ll find that you like certain design styles, and you’ll want to know the design company’s name.

Step 2 – Once you have found several websites that you really like, call the owner of business. Everyone would like to receive a call from an outsider saying, “I really like your website, could you tell me about the company that designed it for you?”

Several more questions you would want to ask: Was the web company easy to work with? Did they take your suggestions or offer their input? Who wrote the copy? Did they give you a firm price before they began?  How do they bill you for changes? Do they make the changes in a timely manner?

Step 3 - After these conversations with farmers and other local businesses, you are almost ready to contact the web design companies that have been recommended to you, and to ask your own questions.

At this point, you may have discovered that most companies that design websites emphasize different aspects of the website in the areas of design, programming, writing and marketing.  A company with a strong design emphasis may provide very attractive sites, while sites designed with a programming specialty may provide you with more features, such as the ability to edit segments of the website on your own.  Some companies have writers that have learned to write specifically for websites and focus on very clear, concise writing that really gets the full value out of your keywords.  And some companies provide a great deal of marketing expertise that can help make you website more effective.

My recommendation is that you look for companies with the best balance of all four.  You want an attractive, functional website that communicates your message well and motivates people to come to the farm right away.  In other words, you won’t be well served with a pretty website that does not communicate effectively, or with a website that lets you update everything, if you don’t have the writing skills to entice people out to the farm.  Unless you have strong writing and marketing skills, you want to hire someone who does.  Make sure whoever you choose understands that bottom line is that you want a website which brings customers to the farm—if it is also pretty, functional and well-written, that’s good too!

Step 4 – Now that you know what you want, it’s time to start calling companies.  Start off by asking them to describe their services.  Ask if they have done any similar sites for other farms. They may not have done any farm websites, but their answers may help you determine how willing they will be to understand your business as part of their work.

Ask them what they provide and what is expected of you. (Such as: Do they do the content writing or do you write it yourself? Will they assist in coming up with the navigation for the site or do they expect you to tell them? Will they provide a written proposal?)

Next, ask them what practices they use to ensure that your website will be ranked as high as possible by the search engines?  In web design lingo, this is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.  The answer may be complex, and you’ll need to trust your instinct as to whether this person really knows this very important aspect of web site design.

If they guarantee a number one ranking, that’s very unlikely, but if they tell you it’s pretty much up to Google, that’s not right either.  You should be hearing about keywords, word placement, keywords in the titles, and things that actually sound like they might help. Just having a website it not enough.  It is important that the designer follow the standard design practices to get the search engines to find your website. Search engines look at the page title, meta tag descriptions, alt tags for the photographs, headlines and the specific html programming code used by web designers.

This may sound confusing to you but that is all the more reason to be sure you are hiring someone who does understand the search engine language. That is why I often will tell people that hiring your grandson to do your website is not always the best choice for your business. You might save some money, but in the long run your website is not doing the job of bringing more people to your farm.

It is also appropriate to ask the designer for a list of their website clients if you want to look at more of their work and talk with a few more people.

Step 5 - Finally, make sure you know how much you will be spending. Hopefully, the web designer will provide you a written proposal that spells out the upfront costs, annual
hosting fee and costs for future changes.

I hope you all know by now that a website has become one of your most important marketing tools.  If you don’t have one, I’m sure that your competition does. Our customers today are finding most everything they want to know on the Internet, and if your farm does not make a good showing here then you’ll never have the opportunity to even see that customer at your front door. Do you homework this winter and create or improve your current website.

Jane Eckert, a national speaker, author and agritourism expert, is principal of Eckert Agrimarketing (www.eckertagrimarketing.com), a firm that helps farmers sell products directly to consumers and develop their operations into tourist destinations, and CEO of Rural Bounty.com, a consumer based directory of agritourism farms in North America.  Jane can be reached by phone 314-862-6288 or at jane@eckertagrimarketing.com