Designing a website though seems a one single task; has multiple components or tasks. When you give a contract to professional website designing company they do take care of all components but; it is very important for you as business owner / advertiser to understand whole process of website designing and each part of the same separately. Specially when your involvement is must for most of the components; after all its your Business's online presence;
Read On to know each part of website designing. In this article I am covering different components briefly and might cover detailed article on each part in future. Certain part booked and renewed annually, some one time and some of them needs attention quarterly with the help of your website designing company.
Domain Booking – (www.yourcompanyname.com) Cost wise very small fee; but importance wise one of the most important part. To be booked and renewed minimum yearly its name / URL / address of your website which goes on all your promotional material. Ideally name of your company or brand which is popular among your client; It's a unique name; once booked no one else can book the same name. And if it's already booked you can't own it and have to find alternate name.
Hosting space booking – Your website (www.yourcompanyname.com) stored on server / computer on Internet so that any one keying domain address explained above from any part of the world 24 x 7, 365 days a year; can see the information about your product and services. Booked & Renewed for a year also has space for your business email Ids.
Content & Images : Your most important role to give content and Images related to your products and services. Please refer to previous Article “Designing A Website Who Does What?”
SEO - Search Engine Optimisation : This part completely fall under website-designing company though its strongly recommended that you need to offer content along with keywords / search words . Your web designing company's role is to follow search engine submission guide; Google earlier had 25 pages of guideline and now its 150+ pages.
Design Clarification Form : Last but not the least; you need to express your personal view-point, taste and preference to web designer. Give them your existing logo, information about your brand guideline and font you would prefer. These are not mandatory but recommended points so that while designing website designer keep in mind your existing corporate branding guideline and your personal taste and preference. This also ensures that your site remains uniform to your existing offline marketing promotional material and prospective consumer can easily co-related the same.
As such Domain Booking, Hosting & designing of website falls under roles & responsibility of website designing company based on content & Images along with keywords / search words provided by you. Though you are not directly involved for all the components its very important for you to know every link in the chain. As any of missing link can lead to non functioning of site or fail producing desire result.
For example if domain is not renewed on time your site can stop getting displayed and at the same time someone else or your competitor can book / block the same. This can lead to a big blunder to any business and can cause heavy financial damages.
At the end; When you start finalising website designing contract you will be in better control to raise valid questions and concern and make sure they don't mess up with your most important first step of digital and social marketing efforts “Your Website” !