Guides
What to know before you pay anyone for a website.
Five questions people ask us before they hire anybody, answered the way we would answer them in a conversation. No sign-up, nothing held back for a sales call. If you read these and go elsewhere, they still did their job.
Web designer or web developer: which one do you actually need?
A web designer decides how the site looks and how it is used. A web developer builds the machinery underneath. For an ordinary business website in India you usually need one person who does both. You need a separate developer only when the site has to do something, rather than say something.
What to ask before you let someone build your website.
Ask five things: will the domain be in my name, will I get the login, do I get a copy of the files, what happens if I leave, and is any of that written down. Everything else — price, timeline, design — is negotiable later. These five decide whether you are stuck.
How to tell if a website quote is fair.
A fair quote lists what you get, names what you pay others for separately, and says what happens after launch. An unfair one is a single number with no breakdown, or a low number that turns out to exclude the words, the photographs and the hosting. Compare the breakdowns, not the totals.
Do you need a new website, or just a fix to the one you have?
If your site is slow, hard to read on a phone, or missing information, that is usually a fix. If it cannot be edited, nobody has the files, it was built on something no longer supported, or it does not work on a phone at all, that is a rebuild. Being ugly on its own is rarely enough.
What happens after your website launches.
Four things need an owner after launch: keeping the content current, keeping the domain renewed, keeping an eye on whether Google can see the site, and having somebody to ring when something breaks. Decide who does each before launch day, because the site does not stop needing attention once it is live.