Selecting a Web Design Firm

There has been quite a bit of talk around the blogosphere about the need for churches to revise their website. I believe that most churches should budget for hiring a company over doing it internally for a number of reasons, including time savings, branding support, and reduced risk. Here are some things to consider when looking for a web design firm:

1. What technology platform(s) does the firm use or require?

This may any of the following: Flash, PHP, Rails, Macromedia Dreamweaver/Contribute, or a custom content management system. Whenever possible, select the technologies that best match your church capabilities. No, not your current ministry capabilities, but your church – is your church highly technical or techie-light? The lighter you are, the easier the barrier to entry must be – no Flash, heavy programming requirements (or none at all), and plenty of reference materials for easy training. If they are trying to sell you an “all-on-one solution” and you can’t find at least 6 books at Amazon covering the technology, run away – you won’t be able to support it.

2. What is their process?

What is their process for taking you from brainstorming to prototype to templates to a full site? Do they help you brand your site, generate web site templates, and then stop? Or, do they migrate your content from your existing site into the new templates to help you get started faster? Do they have a project portal to track requests, post designs for review, and post work as it is being completed?

3. Do they have versioning and disaster recovery?

Hard drives crash. Work is lost. Bad weather happens. Does the firm make offsite backups, storing your project on a server in another state or on tape in a safe location? Do they version their work, in case they make a mistake and need to get back to yesterday’s work? If not, you could lose time, content, or both.

4. Who owns the original work?

If they used Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and other tools – who owns those files with all of the layers and markup? Do you get copies when they are done, or do they own it all? What if you want to modify one of the image buttons or graphics? What about when the marketing team wants to make a minor change to the wording in an image?

5. Do they offer training and support?

Will they help you get the rest of your team trained to use the new templates and technologies? Do they offer support for the first 90 days or more, to help you get some of the pages fixed that you may have messed up?

6. Do all of their sites look the same?

Some firms do original work once, then use the same set of graphics and web layouts for many customers. If they are focusing regionally, it is even worse when a potential visitor thinks you and another church are copies because your websites look exactly the same!

7. How many staff members do they have?

Things happen – they can lose a key designer or programmer. Someone can get sick, or need to take personal leave due to a sick relative. Can they bring in another staff member should something happen to your current team?

Take the time, interview several firms, and find the one that fits your timeline, design, and process. You are a steward of the money you spend on this, so you are accountable for the outcome. If done properly and with prayer, you can glorify God with a fresh design, bring new visitors into your church, and minister to those in need.

[tags]church web design[/tags]

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