5 Questions to Ask When Hiring a Website Designer in Melbourne

Before hiring a website designer in Melbourne for your next project, it’s important to seek answers to some important questions to ensure your website will be designed the way you expect, is completed on time and is within your budget.

Here are 5 questions to help you make an informed decision when choosing a web designer who will best meet your needs.

1. Does the website design company have the expertise and staff capacity to meet your timeline?

The time required to build your website will depend to a large extent on your design and functionality requirements. For instance a typical ecommerce website requires high quality images to be uploaded, shopping carts and payment gateways to be operational and often demo videos to be included on the website.

Apart from the expertise in designing complex websites, find out if the web design company in Melbourne has the staff capacity required to ensure the project comes to fruition. Consider choosing a professional website company over an independent freelancer.

2. What is the process your company uses to deliver your projects? What can I expect?

Processes and systems are important to ensure the website will be designed in accordance with your requirements and there aren’t any avoidable surprises when it’s ready to go online. Changes can often be expensive and time-consuming. A well-defined process ensures that approvals are obtained at each stage and costly mistakes or delays are avoided.

3. What training will be provided as part of the handover process?

Depending on the agreement with your web designer, once the website is ready and goes live, generally the ongoing responsibility of the web designer is confined to helping you with design upgrades and functionality.

In most situations, adding content in the form of blog updates, videos and images, will be your responsibility. Nowadays, it’s easier than ever to add content to a website without technical knowledge.

4. How are website glitches and security threats managed?

It can be quite frustrating for customers landing on your website to find it isn’t functioning, especially when they are primed to make a purchase. Aside from losing out on revenue, your customer service team is likely to be receiving calls from unhappy customers. Not only can this affect the reputation of your company, but it also impacts staff morale.

Website security threats are a rising concern among businesses, especially when storing sensitive information from individuals. A website security breach can have devastating consequences on a business, both financially and on its reputation. The threat of ransomware is also growing steadily and it is a concern to the business community.

Ask your Melbourne web designer about their response time in the event your website crashes and if they have a system in place to mitigate the risk of a security threat. If security concerns are beyond the scope of their work, you may have to explore other service providers who can help.

5. How will the domain name and hosting be transferred on termination of a contract?

Despite the trustworthiness of your website design company and the high quality of work they are capable of, there’s always the likelihood you may have to terminate the contract in the future. This isn’t always because of a breakdown in the relationship. For instance, you may decide to sell the business and the new owners may choose to use an alternative web design company.

If you’re setting up a new website you will require a domain name and a hosting provider. If your web designer is taking the responsibility to organise these for you, ask them about the process for transferring these to another provider if the situation changes.

A reputable web development company in Melbourne should be able to answer these questions and be fully transparent about their systems and processes. What’s important is that your partnership with the Melbourne web designer should result in a website that is functional, profitable and completed on time.