I’ve managed the build for hundreds of websites, and am always getting asked for tips. Here’s a collection of things to be aware of when you’re engaging with an agency or a freelancer.
1 - Copyright
Make sure you own copyright to any custom code & design, and get the photoshop .psd graphics, not just the jpegs.
2 - CMS - content management
The content management system for your website is key. If you get a good one, you’ll have to do very little custom coding, and custom coding is what makes websites expensive. I strongly recommend you choose one that has widespread adoption, you don’t really want to be a guinea pig, if the agency folds/f*cks off, then you can be left with an expensive, non working site. Do not go with a system that is owned by one agency, go with a standard. More on this here
3 - Maintenance/Warranty.
Get a maintenance contract in place, with good response time guarantees. If this isn’t cost effective, just ensure you get say 3 months of free bug fixes after launch. If you go with an well adopted CMS, then it will be easy to find freelance developers, and do the maintenance yourselves, which is much cheaper in the long run.
4 - Browser Compatibility.
Many corporates are still on IE6, so you need IE6 and higher (including 8), Firefox 2 and higher. etc. Make sure this is in your agreement, IE6 is a real pain to code for. I’d suggest go for a minimum screen resolution of 1024x768.
Probably worth coding a mobile iphone/blackberry version as well. This shouldn’t cost much extra.
5 - SEO & Adwords
Unless you want to be really clever, I’d stay away from pure flash sites - they don’t get picked up easily by the search engines. Make sure you can add descriptions and titles to your pages, and that you can create landing pages. An agency can manage your adwords spend for about £80/month -this can save lot’s of time, and get you some traffic quickly. SEO and Adwords is a big topic, do some homework, or pay someone to do it for you.
6 - Hosting
Make sure you own the host & dns directly, you can give the agency login details.
If you’re in Europe, get a European based host, to avoid falling foul of data privacy. Rackspace are good but expensive, Serverbeach look good. For smaller sites Memset.com are good, and do good virtual hosts from about £20/month ( linux miniserver).
Again, make sure you pay for backups, raid storage and unless you’re techie, fully managed support. The hosting will also get you email addresses.
Use a 3rd party service like monitor.us to make sure your site’s working - it will ping you a text if it goes down.
7 - Keep it Fresh and Fast
Make sure someone has time to update the site and answer questions quickly!
Links
http://www.cmsreview.com/ - reviews of current CMS systems