Tips on Working with your website designer or developer
- Be very detailed about your goals and functionality requirements and make sure the developer fully understands your expectations
- Got a really novel idea for a new online business? Ask your developer to sign a confidentiality agreement
- Do your homework on the developer, look at the sites in their portfolio, ring some of their clients
- Expect to receive a plain English web development proposal – if it’s obtuse or confusing it’s not a good start to the business relationship
- If in doubt ask questions and never assume that the system will do ‘xyz’
- Read their emails thoroughly as they will often contain instructions for you to complete
- Have clear deadlines set for the major milestones in your development
- Have a contract and read the fine print
- If you start changing your mind about the nature of the website way through the project be prepared for extra development hours (and what you think might be a small change could be quite a significant one)
