Having a website built takes significant time money and energy on behalf of the business. If it is not done successfully or to its potential, then the investment is wasted and the business may never gain its potential. Choosing the right developers is so key to your success. Here are some tips and insider secrets to save you from expensive failures.

1. Assuming that having a website is important to you, and not just an experimental exercise, then avoid trying to self-build the website or asking friends and family to do it for you. It is vitally important that your website is effective, and competitive. Giving the chance to amateurs to gain some experience at your expense is not the best way.
2. Be clear in your mind about the purpose of the website. If you are going to trade on-line with an eCommerce website, then remember maximising good visitors numbers, an efficient shopping cart and techniques to maximise revenues are key. Do not be distracted by anything which does not positively contribute to that focus. For example an Optician we know wanted to sell glasses via the web, but was more concerned about using a “graphic designer” to design the website. Unfortunately although the website did look great, the search engine optimisation was terrible and it got very little traffic and business. However if the purpose of the website was to be just an information website – an online brochure not expected to attract traffic, then probably the graphic designer approach is best.

1. Unless you just want an on-line brochure to refer to, then the prime purpose of your website is to attract business. Make sure your potential developers are EXPERTS in search engine Optimisation (SEO), this is key to your website being found by those looking for something you offer, but they do not know your business exists. Ask them how they keep up to date on SEO. – They need to be monitoring techniques weekly.
2. Know your Developers they will have inherent strengths and weaknesses. Often they fall into several camps:-
   • Graphic design background -  Great designs, often weak at search engine optimisation.
   • Techy developers – They love technology, they love trying out new gadgets, they typically hate admin and often lack awareness of the business perspective. They may know about SEO, but often implementation is poor.
   • Retail experts – people who care about delivering business results. Technology and graphics are just tools to them in getting the most for your business.
3.  Think about the long term, not only do you need the website built, but you will need to have it updated regularly, and hosted and maybe redeveloped. So be clear on your strategies for each:-
   • Updated regularly – be clear, is this a website that you will update yourself or are you expecting your developers to do it for you? If yourself then make sure it is easy for you to do so, check and avoid an approach which needs techies. If you expect your developers to update it for you, then before you commit get prices for typical updates and a commitment to how quickly they will do such work. Do not expect favours, they will want to be paid, and they will already have work lined up so do not expect them to give you priority. (Whatever they say to get the deal)
   • Hosting – check out how much the annual renewal costs will be. Often the first year is included free in the initial build. Watch out for hidden costs once you are locked in.
   • Bespoke development costs are very high, often unaffordable for a small business, once committed you are unlikely to get a competitive quote from other developers to upgrade your website. So make sure that the technology you choose is not reaching its natural decline. Make sure it has the leading edge functionality you may need. For small business I would recommend avoiding bespoke website development unless the functionality you require really is unique. Much better and cheaper to use the latest “off-the-shelf” technology that is known to many developers.
4. Do not let the Price distract you from the best buying decision. What matters is how much tender loving care – time – is going to be lavished on your website. Remember, especially with eCommerce websites that the web is highly competitive, and your website needs to be fine tuned to compete. So a very low price does not bode well for attention to detail. So avoid cheap deals.

   Putting price in context, probably there will only be a few hundred to a few thousands of pounds difference in price between rival website developers. Think, in a year’s time, how much business do I expect my website to generate a month? five hundred pounds, ten thousand, fifty thousand pounds.? Imagine the project being delayed a month before it is effective, or not working well and running at 80%?  See how much money is lost and compare it to the development costs.

   Again on tender loving care, what are the developers like to whom you are going to entrust your business? Are they a big company with high overheads, to whom you will be just another client, or will they care?

5.  Be very wary about companies promising first page rankings. It is a common sales technique to sign you up, it is not until you are several months down the line that you discover whether it has worked. You may find hidden conditions that cover their failure, or require you to spend more to comply.
6. Likewise be wary about companies offering to improve the SEO of your existing website. They charge a lot, often over several months, and the successes they claim regarding keywords probably would have occurred anyway. Best that the website is built with good SEO in the first place.
7. Check out references, and other website built by the developers. Choose some at random, find out what the developers were like once the website has been built.
8. Do not be unrealistic about what you are going to get from your website developers. They need to make a living and time is money. They could be expecting to earn between £200 to £500 to £1200 a day. A £500 information website is not many days work, nor is £2000 for an eCommerce website. You may have a fixed price deal with them, but there will be a limit to how many favours you can expect them to do. So in order to get the best relationship and deal bear in mind the following:-
   • Remember unless explicitly stated the client is responsible for providing the copy and the words for the website. Have the material ready on a per page basis. Do not waste the developers time with bits and pieces, or changes.
   • Changing your mind about the design once it has been agreed and implemented can waste a lot of time and cost money and or goodwill.
   • As soon as you are trained up on updating your website, go and practise. If you delay then you will forget what to do and then will need the developers to do you a favour.
   • Listen carefully if the developers proposes a different way of implementing things, OK it may be to make his life easier, but there are likely to be sound reasons for the advice, based on what will bring in more business.