Lucky you! There are two Denver homes for sale in your price range! Both homes are $595,000, near water, have quiet neighbors and are within walking distance to a school! So assuming all things equal, you should just buy the cheapest one, right?
Well here’s the deal: House No. 1 is on the lake in a neighborhood filled with working professionals and an award-winning charter school one block over. It’s move-in ready, practically brand new and will require little maintenance. All the fixtures are included – including top brand stainless steel appliances!
House No. 2 borders a run-down public swimming pool and most of the surrounding houses are abandoned due to foreclosure. There’s a beautician school two blocks away and the house is a “fixer-upper.” There are no lightbulbs or blinds, let alone a working stove or dishwasher.
Photo credit: Renjith Krishnan
You see where we’re going with this. If you’re going to get a bid for a website redesign, make sure you’re comparing apples to apples. Here are 25 questions to ask anyone who bids on your website redesign:
1. Do you charge a flat fee or by the hour?
2. Do you have experience designing ecommerce sites?
3. What changes do you recommend?
4. How might this technology or design limit future development of the site?
5. Do you have someone else in your office I can call if I can’t reach you?
6. Does this include maintenance or troubling-shooting? If so, for how long?
7. Does your rate quote include everything I’ve asked for?
8. Do you use an off-the-shelf template or build from scratch?
9. Will this be optimized for search engine ranking?
10. How easy will it be for me to make changes myself?
11. What other services do you offer?
12. Does this rate include SEO copywriting or do we need to supply all the text?
13. How many pages does this include?
14. Can you link this to my blog?
15. Will this include social media sharing capabilities? RSS feeds?
16. Will this reflect and support our other branding efforts?
17. How can we increase our rankings with the search engines?
18. Does this include video and graphics?
19. What analytics will it have?
20. What other features (newsletter signup, lead capture) will it have?
21. Is this mobile friendly?
22. Do you have references?
23. Have you designed other websites with similar features?
24. Where will my site be hosted?
25. What’s your policy on change requests and how long does it take?
While a $500 bid for a website redesign might sound like a steal, you might be getting a bare bones makeover. And much like the emperor’s new clothes, you could be left with less than you started with.
What’s your biggest fear about redesigning your website? The cost? Losing functionality? Giving up control? Share your thoughts here.
EasyChair Media can help evaluate your current website and give you straightforward answers to your questions about cost, function and analytics.
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