How To Work With A Website Developer

David Simmer is a designer, web developer, and all-around dork who loves building and talking about creative/technical stuff. If he’s not doing any of those at the moment, he’s probably out riding a bike, playing his piano, or eating ice cream.  You can follow his adventures on Twitter, as well.

So you’re jumping online with your business! Or perhaps you’ve already got a website, but it’s time to make some improvements. Either way, you’ll be working with someone who knows their way around all of the code, configuration, and three-letter acronyms (FTP! CMS! PHP! CSS!)  involved with setting up and changing stuff on the web. For the purposes of this post, we’ll assume you’re working with either a solo developer or a small shop, not a huge development agency.

Start things off right

Before that first meeting with your developer, answer some questions for yourself:

-What do I want this website to do for me? Sell something? Show off my work? Explain what I do?

-Who’s going to be using this site? Other businesses? A certain demographic of people?

-What are my needs, wants, and nice-to-haves for this new site?

That last question, wherein you prioritize what you want to get done, will be especially helpful when it comes to talking budget and timeframe with your developer.

Map it out

Your web developer will be skilled in User Experience Design, which means far more than “make that button blue.” It’s the set of skills involved in figuring out the best way to structure pages in your site, organize information, and make the site nice for humans to use.

You also probably have a good idea of how you’d like the information on your site needs to be structured, so map it out on a sheet of paper. It can be as simple as labeled boxes with lines connecting them. This is called wireframing, and it’s a great way to figure things out before the developer starts building.

Be ready for change

-Your developer may have some good ideas about how to organize your website which are different from yours.

-Content for the web often needs to be edited or written differently from print.

-Visual layouts that work in print might not work on screen.

-People will be using a wide array of different browsers and different-sized screens to look at your site. What’s most important is that it’s usable and readable, and looks good - not necessarily identical on every device.

There’s a lot more to the web development process, but this will get you started on the right foot. As with any creative project, communicate, be prompt, and enjoy the process as your developer builds something great for you!

 

Sarah Von Bargen is a Vianza contributer, interview wrangler and professional blogger in her own right. Follow her on Twitter for tweets about travel, self-employment, and cheese.

image credit: oskay

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