The better prepared you are before you hire a website designer, the smoother the process of creating your website will go. Here are a few important items that you can have on hand before the design process starts.
1. What is the purpose of your website? Are you going to use it as an online brochure and send people to it or do you want it to bring people to you? Are you going to use it to sell your products, such as books, workshops, classes, etc? A visitor with the intent of buying something will want a different style of website than the visitor who is looking for information.
2. Who is your target market? Every successful website is designed with the typical end user in mind. For example, a website for a funeral company wouldn't use the same colors, fonts, layout, or technology that a website for skateboards would use.
Create a customer profile of your ideal customer or client listing everything you know about them. Age, income bracket, lifestyle, special interest, and region are some of the characteristics of your target market that could shape the design of your website. Any information that you can give the web designer about your target market will help them design a website that will appeal to your visitors.
If your business is personal, such as coaching, I recommend that it also reflect you as much as possible. Spend some time surfing the net, looking at Other People's websites. They don't need to be websites of businesses like yours. Pick a minimum of 3 that you like and 3 that you don't like, note their address for future reference, and make notes about what you like and don't like about them.
3. What features do you want on your website? Shopping cart? Flash? Email form for contacting you? Refer-a-friend form?
Are you going to need updates and maintenance after the website goes live? If you will be having product changes, sale items, updates on services, and the like, then let the designer know. If they don't do maintenance then ask if they can refer you to someone who will. If you are planning on doing the maintenence in-house then the designer and the person who is going to be doing the maintenence will need to discuss the architecture of the website and the procedures for updating.
5. What is the content of the pages you wish to offer on your website? A home page, of course, and a page about you. What other pages do you envision? This is important info for your website designer to have before they give you an estimate on the cost of your website design.
6. Are you are going to have print material such as letterheads and envelopes? If so, it's advisable to let your website designer know before they begin the design. The reason for this is that images on the web are of a much lower resolution than print images. An image of higher resolution can be made into one of lower resolution, but the inverse is not true. Once pixels have been removed from an image so that the image can be used in a website, they can't be put back in. If you are going to have a graphic designer do your logo, run it by your website designer before it's final. Some images are not easily transferable from print to web.
7. Do you understand what the designer is saying? Don't be afraid to ask questions. If you don't understand the answers, say so. If the designer can't give you answers that you understand then they may not be the designer for you. The creation of a website is not a process done by one person alone. It is a co-creation between you and the designer or design team. Your website is a reflection of you and it is your responsibility and your right to participate in the process of it's creation.
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