Website Design: The main question to ask before starting the design process

When designing a website for any client you have to go through the basic questions of what do you like, what will the content be, how do you want your website to function, what do you envision your  website to be like?   Mainly what are the clients wants, need, and ideas.

But one of the most important questions to ask before designing a website or redesigning a website is how will you maintain the website in the future? Does the client want access to make edits, are they planning on hiring a website designer to maintain the website, or does an employee need to be trained?

This is one of the main questions I ask clients when I meet with them.  Depending on their answers we can go build a custom website, work from a template site such as WordPress or Joomla, or look at a combination of the two.

With my most recent website design project for Cynthia Nowicki Moore, CFP, Wealth Management & Financial Planning we had a template program.  But her profession indicated which program-template to use.  A new template program called Forefield.  This is always the fun time for me as a designer because I get to learn a new system.

Once creating her account I looked around the system for 10–15 minutes to get my footing and then the fun part... I start to design her website with the content, images, and information we prepared ahead of time.  Overall the website was created in a few days.  After going through a couple of revisions through compliance we were ready to launch her website.  CynthiaNowickiMoore.com is now live for all to see, read and learn.

So remember when you meet with a website designer before you leave that meeting asked how will the website be used in the future so everyone is on the same page for how best to build and create the website.