So you’ve found a company or a designer, they have the skills you need, and you like the look of their portfolio. Now it’s time to actually approach them with your project. This is a handy (not exhaustive by any means) list of things to ask and/or look out for.

What CMS do you suggest?

Bonus link: Choosing a CMS – does your site actually need one?

A lot of companies still try to get away with offering static sites. I’m not saying a CMS is needed in 100% of cases (it’s probably more like 99.9%), but even if you only change content once a year isn’t it better to be able to do that yourself rather than pay extra for someone else to do it? I’ve had a few clients who started off on this kind of deal from someone and then decided to add a blog, or other regularly updated content, meaning they needed me to port the entire site over to a CMS. Better to just get it built on one in the first place, methinks.

Some people will tell you they have an in-house CMS. This is fine, though may be more expensive. It’s often more tailored to your needs though can equally be more clunky and unintuitive. Ask for a demo and judge for yourself.

Others will use a pre-existing solution. WordPress is probably one of the more common ones you’ll see being suggested because it’s simple, powerful and free but there are more complex solutions (Drupal, Joomla et al) as well as much more basic ones too (CushyCMS).

Anyone with your best interests in mind will suggest what’s right for you, and not just whichever they personally prefer.

Which browsers do you support?

This is pretty controversial, but tells you a lot about the company/person you’re dealing with. The gist is that new, better technologies won’t work on old out-of-date browsers. The main culprit here, and bane of web developers everywhere, is Internet Explorer 6. The reason it’s still an issue is that many large companies won’t upgrade, seeing it as unnecessary expense. Therefore the audience share is much higher than usual and websites must be “dumbed down” if they’re going to be viewable by everyone.

Support for IE6 varies. Some prefer to stop supporting it altogether, reasoning that if the entire internet breaks for them these companies will be forced to upgrade. Others see it as their duty to support as many browsers as possible.

Browser support affects your decision in two ways:

What kind of site are you running? If it’s primarily aimed at corporate types, IE6 support is probably the way to go. If you’re aiming for the young hip market you can pretty much forget about it.

How much are you willing to pay? Fixing problems in older browsers takes more development time, and therefore costs more. Will the percentage of your target audience stuck on IE6 be worth the extra money?

Do you ever use tables for page layout?

If they answer “yes” to this, just run as far away as you can. You don’t even need to know the specifics of why, it’s probably the biggest red flag they could possibly wave at you other than “well it’s not me doing the actual work, it’s my daughter, but she’s really creative and her nursery teacher says she definitely has talent”.

A few other bits

If you’re quoted an hourly rate, be sure to get an estimate timescale too. If it’s per-project, make sure you understand exactly what would be included, and what wouldn’t. You don’t want to end up in a situation where you’re ready to go ahead, only to find out at the last possible second when looking at the contract that they don’t include setting up the site on your server and you’ll need to hire someone else to do that.

Speaking of contracts, make sure they use a contract! Just ask outright, or see if they offer an example on their site anywhere. You may think working with someone with no contract gives you an opportunity to be….unscrupulous…but it gives them the exact same thing.

You may also want to find out their usual working hours, not for any nefarious purposes but just so you know what to expect when emailing questions at various times of the day. Different countries are on different times, after all, and I’m sure I’m not the only freelancer who uses her career as an excuse to work all night and sleep all morning!