Your website is one of your most important online marketing tool. Yes, you need to keep up with the times by upgrading the site every 3-5 years. There are lots of options for creating a new website. There are the DIY options. There are companies the live and breath on website development alone. Then there are advertising agencies in Fort Lauderdale like us, that offer affordable website development as one of their comprehensive services.

When it comes to website design, the most common question people ask me when they want a new website is, “If you were in charge of this, who are the 2 or 3 people you’d want to be sure to talk to – to help think through the issues, help us figure out who should do the work, etc.?” I think this should perhaps be the tenth and eleventh questions you should ask, not the first.

Here’s my list of difficult and important questions you have to answer before you hire website design company:

• What is the goal of the site?
• In other words, when it’s working great, what specific outcomes will occur?
• Who are we trying to please? If it’s the boss, what does she want?
• How many people on your team have to be involved? At what level?
• Who are we trying to reach? Is it everyone? Our customers? A certain kind of prospect?
• What are the sites that this group has demonstrated they enjoy interacting with?
• Are we trying to close sales?
• Are we telling a story?
• Are we hoping that people will watch or learn?
• Do we need people to spread the word using various social media tools?
• Are we building a tribe of people who will use the site to connect with each other?
• Do people find the site via word of mouth?
• Is there ongoing news and updates that need to be presented to people?
• Is the site part of a larger suite of places online where people can find out about us, or is this our one sign post?
• Will the website be mobile friendly?
• Do we want people to call us?
• How many times a month would we like people to come by? For how long?
• Who needs to update this site? How often?
• How often can we afford to overhaul this site?
• Does showing up in the search engines matter? If so, for what terms? At what cost? Will we be willing to compromise any of the things above in order to achieve this goal?
• Will the site need to be universally accessible? Do issues of disability or language or browser come into it?
• How much money do we have to spend? How much time?
• Does the organization understand that ‘everything’ is not an option?

If you have any questions that we didn’t cover here, please give us a call. We’re Springboard Ad/Design, a full-service ad agency based in Fort Lauderdale. Some people call us a website design company, or a marketing firm. What you call us is not important, the point is that we provide breathrough marketing solutions that won’t break the bank.