Sadly, we’ve seen it a lot lately– organizations who, after severing a professional relationship, get ripped off by their website developers. The main reason? Companies don’t know what they should have control of, from the get-go.
In today’s video post, I share five things you should look for when hiring a website developer (and after you’ve hired them). By taking control of these five things, from the start (or right now!), your working relationship will not only be a lot smoother; but if the time comes for you to part ways, it will be an easy (well, easier) breakup.
As promised, following are the five things to look for when hiring a website developer:
- Weekly Updates: Ask that your web development company provides a weekly status update, or some sort. Whether it’s a working mock-up of the site or a basic progress report, make sure you’re keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s going on throughout the process.
- Mobile version of your site. The statistics are staggering: Half a BILLION people accessed mobile internet worldwide, in 2009. Usage is expected to double that number, within five years. Without a mobile version of your site, you are missing out on an extremely large and captive audience.
- Analytics, analytics, analytics. I can’t say it enough– analytics are SO important. Make sure your developer is implementing some sort of analytics software. Whether it’s two of my favorites– Google Analytics (which is FREE) or HubSpot (or a combination of both), analytics should be an indispensable part of your online AND offline marketing strategy. Bottom line: it helps to ensure your website is working for you.
- Content Management System (CMS): A good content management system ensures a couple of things: (a) that you can easily and quickly update content on your website, without knowing code; and (b) when it’s a widely used CMS (which it should be), you’re able to take it with you, wherever you go. My favorite? WordPress.
- Own your domain and hosting login information. As I said in the video, this is often overlooked. Without this information, you will have to rebuild your site from the ground up, losing all SEO authority you’ve built (and a whole lot of money on top of that).
Do you have any web developer horror stories to share? Is my list missing anything? Please share, in the comments below!
