If you are seriously thinking about redesigning your web site, here is a web design questionnaire that you can use to consider the reasons, the performance, the web designer, and the work prior, during and post launch.
About the Reasons:
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Why do I want to redesign my web site?
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Can these issues be improved with tweaks to the current site or with an SEO initiative?
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Is this an isolated initiative to make the site prettier? or is it part of a larger comprehensive marketing plan to improve sales? - What are the lead generation and revenue increase goals that I want to achieve from my web redesign?
About Your Customer:
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Who is my customer?
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What questions does my customer have that I should answer through the site?
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What is my customer’s buying process? - How will the new site mimic that?
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What’s the story and how will it be told?
About the Marketing Performance of the Site:
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What will the SEO implications be?
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How will the new site sell? - What will be the calls to action on the site? Do they cover all the steps of the buying cycle?
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What is the site content plan? How will the content be managed, so that you don’t end up with a beautiful new site that has no content?
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What is the Search Engine Optimization strategy? - What are the most important keywords to rank your site?
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How will the new site be kept fresh and updated - What is the content creation strategy - How does that relate to story to be told?
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Will it be accessible via mobile?
About the Firm that You Contract to Develop Your Site:
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What’s the team background - Have they developed sites similar to what I want?
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Did they explain clearly what is the process to optimize my website and the reason behind every step of the project framework?
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Are they a creative design firm? Or are they a firm that looks at the whole picture and focuses on the results of the site?
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What are some of the traffic, lead generation and revenue improvement results that they have accomplished in other projects as a result of web redesign?
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How do they track those results?
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What are the projects and budgets needed to generate those kind of results?
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Do they have any certifications?
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Have they won any awards beyond creative design?
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How will the project be managed? - Is there a project management software that they will use to interact with key people in your company? Or is everything based on email?
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How does the firm charge? - Golden platter all inclusive type project based on a set of deliverables previously agreed upon? Or is there an initial budget but if time runs out, they start charging by the hour leading to an endless over spending craze?
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If there is a bug and the project is launched, will they charge to fix it, or is there a warranty policy?
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What are some references / business cases?
Post - launch:
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What will be the staffing needs to maintain the site?
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How will we spread the word about it?
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How will I measure the success?
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What will be the cost and how will the ROI be calculated?
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How will I keep up with all the leads generated through the website
And the most important question relates to the fact that no website project should be considered a complete marketing project. Your website redesign is the first important step (if done properly) of an effective marketing program:
30.1 What is my plan to continue to improve traffic and conversion... forever?
