As the husband of a Museum Educator, and being a web designer myself, I have often chipped into conversations about sites for Museums and galleries. Having chatted to a few people in the culture sector who have had bad experiences with the process I thought I’d contribute my first email to the Gem list. I hope it helps one or two of you with web based projects in the near future.

As in any industry, there are the good guys and the bad guys. The problem is, you don’t know if you’re dealing with the good and the bad. Just like when I take my car in to get fixed, you could sell me a whole package of twaddle and I’d buy it, because I haven’t a clue. So I thought I’d like to share some ideas with the group…

If your web design firm isn’t asking you the right questions and if you, in turn, aren’t asking the right questions, you might end up with someone who will do a nice enough job, leaving you with a website that is far short of your potential and you don’t even know.

It’s critical to approach your web project strategically with the next few years in mind otherwise you end up needing to start over, or make expensive changes down the road;

Before you share a ton of information, I’d be curious to let them take the lead and see what questions they are asking you. Then save your questions to the end, which we’ll get to.

Get the designer to show you some examples of the websites they’ve created that are in a similar price range to what you are budgeting for. Make sure that you like their work, as it’s likely your new website will be similar in style to what they are proficient at creating. Take this to the next level, and contact a few of their clients to see if they were happy with the process, the end result and how long the project took.

Depending on the company you go with, you may have the one person who does it all, or you may have a manager that you work with and behind the scenes there’s a number of people involved in the project. These can include graphic designers, programmers and copywriters. You need to know – who will be your central point of contact? Is it someone you can easily relate to and communicate well with? Are they a technical expert or is someone else in charge of the technical stuff. It’s important for you to have a relationship with the key people making decisions about your project, so that you can communicate with them directly.

Don’t be afraid of working with small firms - freelancers, they may not have great coffee in their beautiful minimalist office - in face they may not even have an office. Working without overheads can make them more competitive, and you often get a better, one-to-one service.

It’s important to know how many rounds of changes they will allow in your scheduled fee. Some companies offer you unlimited changes till you are happy, others will make you pay if you do not accept one of the first few rounds of designs and changes. Keep in mind if you have taken note of question 1, and looked a the website designers existing work, and you like it, it is pretty likely they will design something you are happy with very quickly.

Have them outline for you the creative process so that you are confident that you’ll be happy with the end design, proposed colours, fonts and images. Ideally, you should have a very good idea of what the end result will look like before production commences. Many companies have multiple ‘sign off”s’ which help to keep the project within scope – such as a sign off at ‘brief’ stage, then ‘concept’ stage, and finally at ‘launch’ stage.

Many web designers (and clients) focus on the design of the website, and forget about content until later. This is usually a costly mistake! A successful website is one that communicates its content effectively. The words on your website have the power to make your website a success, or a failure.

The content needs some planning to ensure it will provide the information your website visitors want, that it will work to convert website visitors into museum visitors, and that it will be optimised for search engine results (see Question 9 for more on SEO). Planning your website’s content in the early stages of the project is vital, so that your site is designed to suit your content. Think about starting a Word document now with the text for your new site - again more on this at the end.

Ask the designer how many hours they provide for any bug fixes or last changes when the website is live. Some designers charge for every single update post sign off, and others allow a certain number of hours or changes. Make sure you understand this, so you make all the necessary changes before the site goes live. This brings us to the most commonly asked question …

Whilst having a great website is obviously important to any museum, the cost will play a big role in which web designer you choose. Truth is, websites can range in price from a few hundred pounds up into tens of thousand′s.

I feel the average investment for a small museum website sits somewhere between £1,000 and £3,500. Big differences can arise based on how much graphic design work is incorporated as well as what specialised functionality is included (such as interactives or shopping carts).

Also ask about maintenance contracts - who will keep the security patches up to date, who will be there if you find that there is an issue at an inopportune time? Some firms offer ongoing contracts others charge by the hour.

Make sure you are comfortable with the process for making future updates. Will they provide you with a Content Management System (CMS) so you can make basic changes yourself? Or do you need to pay them to make a change for you. This is incredibly important, because if you want to make a simple change to something like a phone number, address or even pricing information, you need to know whether it’s possible to do it yourself or whether you’ll have to pay for it. Sadly this is often the most costly trap for the unaware.

Every project needs a realistic turnaround time. Based on the agreed specifications, your website designer will be able to tell you how long it will take to complete your website. Make sure you know what will be expected of you throughout the process, so that you can respond quickly to any decisions that need to be made. Also, be sure to discuss what happens if completion of the project is taking longer than expected.

Getting your website listed by search engines such as Google, is a big topic and an important one. Your website needs to be structured and coded properly internally so that it can be easily optimised for search engines. Your web designer is not necessarily responsible for every aspect of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of your website, but it is important they understand the topic, and unfortunately, some web designers do not. Keep in mind that unless you are hiring them to do so, they are not responsible for your search engine results, or for the ongoing SEO work that is required to keep you at the top of search engine results. Make sure that you understand what they will do for you as part of your SEO strategy, and what you need to manage yourself.

Make sure your domain name registrations and hosting accounts are signed up in YOUR name, not the website design companies name. With the domain names you may even be able to do this yourself and then just provide the details to your web designer. With the hosting of your website, which refers to where your website files will be hosted, your web designer may have you host your website with them, or they may help to set you up with an external hosting service. Transferring ownership of domain names or hosting accounts at a later stage can be problematic, especially if two years down the track your web designer has closed up shop and moved on to other ventures!

Take some time at the planning stage to have a document ready with as much of the text for the new website ready as possible. Not just the “About Us” and “Opening Hours” pages - everything you can think of. Policies, public transport links, all of that kind of thing. When you’re talking to the web companies it will give them a better idea of the project. If it is a service they offer, then the text can be used as a basis for the search engine optimisation.

Images, colours, and photos. These are often real bumps in the road. If you have an established brand, colours, logos in place make sure you have all the details in hand. Source high quality, high resolution images of logos available for the designer to use. Know that the colours are, the pantone values etc. Do you have lots of quality photos? do you need more up to date images? If so look at hiring a local photographer (please don't rely on your phone camera) to put together a portfolio. Buying off the shelf ‘stock photography’ can really expensive, and finding the right images can take many billable hours to source. Having a folder of your images ready to go can save days of work and money.