Hiring someone to build or work on your website is extremely tough, especially if you don’t grok code (or even recognize “grok” as a word). How can you tell a solid web professional from a mediocre or bad one when you don’t know a whole lot about what they do?

1. H ow to hire
a Web Professional

2. How do you know who’s
mediocre & who’s amazing?

3. WaSP wants to
make it easier

4. Before you sit down
๏ What is the purpose of your website?
๏ Who is your audience and what should they be able
to do on your site?
๏ What is your budget?
๏ Do you have a deadline?

5. Question 1:
Can you walk me
through your process?

6. Process
✓Professional Wannabe
Is organized Is disorganized
Has a process Promises immediate
results
Can explain it &
it makes sense Doesn’t ask for
your input
Has a place for you in it

7. Question 2:
How will you ensure my users
have a great experience?

8. User Experience
✓Professional Wannabe
Will discuss user goals Will want to start
in relation to your designing right away
business goals
Is confident the design
May propose they come up with will
interviewing your users work
Will discuss research Doesn’t discuss user
informing design goals or key tasks
May propose testing
the site with real users
throughout the project

9. Question 3:
How will users
find my site?

10. Findability
✓Professional Wannabe
Will discuss the Promises you a #1
importance of Google ranking
well-written content
Will focus on “meta”
Will explain how tags and keywords
proper coding makes a
site easier to index May suggest multiple
landing pages with
May want to talk about duplicate content
URL structure and
link text

11. Question 4:
Who will write
the content for
my site?

12. Content
✓Professional Wannabe
Will recommend Will be happy to take
authoring new content content directly from
for your website your brochures
May offer to write Will offer to update the
copy, recommend a site for you if you give
copywriter, or simply them a call
provide guidance
May recommend a
Content Management
System

13. Question 5:
Will my site look the
same on every computer?

14. Browsers
✓Professional Wannabe
Will discuss the fluidity May promise an
of the web as a medium identical design in
and explain why sites every browser
will look different on
different computers May try to talk you into
only supporting a
Will focus on design handful of browsers or
consistency over screen sizes
pixel-perfection
May bring up
progressive
enhancement

15. Question 6:
How will you
make my site
accessible to
all users?

16. Accessibility
✓Professional Wannabe
Will discuss the May seem confused
importance of
well-written copy May try to brush off the
question
Will explain how
markup enriches May simply declare
your copy that everyone will be
able to use your site
May bring up color without explaining how
contrast, font sizing, they will achieve that
video captioning &
transcripts, and/or
WAI-ARIA

17. Question 7:
How will my site
work on mobile?

18. Mobile
✓Professional Wannabe
Will discuss creating May dismiss mobile
adaptive layouts that browser usage
flex to the dimensions
of different browsers May suggest building a
and devices separate mobile site
Will talk of prioritizing May discuss hiding
key tasks content on mobile
Will explain how they May try to sell you on
test your site on a developing an app
variety of devices

19. Question 8:
What tech
will you use?

20. Technologies
✓Professional Wannabe
Will refer you to their Won’t know
developers if they
don’t know or they will Won’t mention CSS
wax philosophical Won’t be able to tell
about HTML, CSS, and you which version of
JavaScript HTML will be used
May mention and why
progressive Will say they design
enhancement in Photoshop and
May mention that they then generate the
hand-code every site code automatically

21. Question 9:
What will this cost?

22. Cost
✓Professional Wannabe
Will be able to give Will be non-committal
you a ballpark cost when it comes to price
estimate and rough
timeline based on May quote you a figure
similar projects that seems incredibly
low (e.g. $1,000)
May not commit to a
price until the scope is May not require
fully understood payment until the
project is complete
Will require a deposit
and establish a
payment schedule

23. Question 10:
Who owns
the code?

24. Ownership
✓Professional Wannabe
Will be able to May be unwilling to
discuss issues of assign copyright to you
copyright, ownership,
and licensing May be unwilling to
hand over source files
Will assign copyright
(or a license) to you
upon receiving final
payment
Will be willing to
provide source files
as appropriate

25. Feeling a tad
overwhelmed?

26. Don’t be nervous,
it’s gonna be fun!

27. biz.webstandards.org

28. How to Hire a
Web Professional
by Aaron Gustafson
@AaronGustafson
Slides available at
http://slideshare.net/AaronGustafson
This presentation is licensed under
Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
except where otherwise noted
flickr Photo Credits
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aarongustafson/galleries/72157629656520796/