Shopping for a Web Site? Ask the Right Questions

Browse the internet on any given day and you'll find many beautiful, well-crafted Web sites. Unfortunately, you'll find just as many that are unattractive, poorly put together and just plain don't work. Why there are so many less-than-excellent Web sites, and what steps businesses can take to make sure they don't end up with one, was the subject of a talk given by David R. Krumholz, President of Strand Management Solutions, Inc., at a breakfast meeting of The Princeton Council. 

"Constructing a Web site properly takes tremendous attention to detail," said Mr. Krumholz. "There are so many individual components, each complex in and of itself, that must be fit together in order to end up with a positive result." Mr. Krumholz gave meeting participants a chart listing each separate task that a Web project requires, everything from the fairly obvious, such as designing the graphics and writing the content, to the much less obvious, such as making browser support decisions, ensuring database connectivity, and coding for search engine optimization.

Not every Web site will require every step on the chart. But, according to Mr. Krumholz, even a simple site has more going on than most people realize. "To make a good purchasing decision when hiring the services of a Web development company, you need to know which of the components you will need and the ability of the company to provide each and every one of them."

It is not as simple as asking how much do you charge for a Web site. The question should be what do you provide, at what cost, for application design, hosting, graphic design, marketing consulting, database interface, and so on. "There is a simple test to determine what a potential vendor knows about the subject," said Mr. Krumholz. "Can he explain what he is offering in simple English? If not, beware!"

It is not necessary, by the way, for a Web development company to have all the required specialists on staff; it's common practice to outsource some of the components to partner organizations.

Another reliable test you can use before deciding whether to hire the services of a particular company is to look at some of the Web sites they've created and, for each, ask yourself:

1. Is it clear which words or pictures should be clicked on to get from one section of the site to another, or is extra explanation required?
2. Are there broken links or missing graphics? Do "run-time errors" pop up?
3. If you're accessing the site with a dial-up connection, how long does it take the pages to load? It requires a little more effort for a designer to create pages that load quickly, but this is the kind of care and attention to detail that you're looking for.
4. If possible, view the site through more than one browser. Have the designers taken the trouble to accommodate the differences between Internet Explorer and Netscape, or have they taken the lazy way out by telling you which browser you must use to see the site properly?
5. Likewise, view the site at more than one screen resolution. A careful designer will make sure that a site looks good and fits on the screen without horizontal scrolling at all three of the commonly used settings: 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. 
6. Does the site show up in the major search engines? Say, for example, one of the sites you're looking at is a travel agency that specializes in cruises to Hawaii. Go to Alta Vista, or Excite and type "Hawaiian cruises." Is the web site listed in the returns? "Search engine placement is its own complicated subject," said Mr. Krumholz. "There are literally hundreds of search engines now and each has its own rules as to how they build their search database."