Who are webmasters? They are highly skilled individuals working for small businesses. They are often tasked with doing just about everything; from designing the websites to search engine optimization.
They are also responsible for your website’s daily maintenance.
So here’s the thing; if you want to see your business climb the stairs of success, you need to make sure that you onboard the most creative multitasking webmaster in whom you can bestow your trust.
But, before you hire a webmaster to build and market your digital product, you must be wondering what questions should I ask him/her. After all, he/she is going to run my website on behalf of me.
Don’t worry, we are here to the rescue.
Here is a list of questions that will ensure that you are onboarding the right webmaster on your team.
Table of Contents
Question # 1: Can You Please Show Me a Few Samples of Your Work?
To demonstrate their capabilities, it is important that candidates should share links of their previous best samples with you.
A good webmaster shall never hold back when it comes to showing off their technical skills. It will help you assess whether they are just skillful web designers or are they also good at coding HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, and other things.
For example, Branex is a web design company that shows off their previous work samples in a Work Library which is accessible on the site.
Jason Hong, professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science who is also performing his active duties as the chief technical officer of Wombat Security Technologies state:
“It is essential to carefully examine their portfolio and work samples to help assess their overall style and skills.”
Question # 2: Which Technologies Are You Planning to Use for Building & Maintaining Website?
It is important for a webmaster to outline all the necessary tools which they are going to use for publishing, designing, and scheduling the website content.
While you are at there, make sure to point out all the pros and cons of each individual tool as well.
For example, most webmasters suggest WordPress as a great tool for content publishing. They use a range of plugins such as Visual Composer & WP Blog Manager to design blogs. Also, they use WP Scheduled Post for pre-scheduling it.
Most Popular: Does Offline Branding have Space in SEO?
Malcolm Ong is the co-founder and chief technical officer who is working at Skillshare. He has mentored over 500 different Startup and here’s something worthy that he suggests:
“For instance, if they incorporate a blog on your website, would they use WordPress or Drupal or would they code everything from scratch? If you’re not tech-savvy, you may not fully understand all of the technologies he or she proposes, but they should at least be able to present you with clear options that you can generally understand.”
Question # 3: How Are You Planning to Optimize My Website on Google Search?
We all know that Google is the landmine for ranking various content.
According to the world-class author, Lisa Lopuck who authored Web Design for Dummies back in 2012 suggests candidates to assess how knowledgeable the webmasters ware whom they are about to assign with SEO services.
In her book, she says:
“Ask them to explain which strategies and methods they’ll use to boost your rankings in all of the major search engines”
It is important to learn that the webmaster you are about to employ for your business is skilled with Google Analytics. After all, they should be skilled at tracking website traffic and study user-behavior based on statistics. It will help you gauge the effectiveness of their SEO efforts through campaigns.
Question # 4: How Do You Look at Security & What is Your Approach to Securing my Website?
Just as much as the aesthetics and functionality of your website is important, it is also important that your webmaster should be well equipped to respond to any security issue that might arise. In the online world, you should be well prepared to tackle anything… from getting crashed to getting hacked.
And you need to make sure that you do it quickly than the rest.
As a website owner, ask them how they are aiming to protect the site from experiencing phishing attacks. Another security question which you can ask is how will the personal data be verified.
What measures are you planning to take in order to keep it well protected.
For example, if a webmaster is opting in to create a shopping cart for your e-commerce business, what security measures is he taking to make sure that customer data stays protected?
Identify theft and credit card information theft is quite a common problem in the online world.
Question # 5: Let’s discuss the Copyright Issues and the Ownership of the Website
It is important, that you and the webmaster, should both be updated on the latest copyright concerns.
Also, inquire them from where they will get the photos and graphics for their online websites. It should not come in conflict with any legal concerns. Either they are choosing commercial stock photo licensed images or are they using free creative common attributed licensed images?
Oh and by the way, you won’t automatically own the website that someone else has designed for you. You will have to create a “work made for hire” or a “copyright assignment agreement.”
It will ensure that the website owner is bound by the law to take ownership of the website once it is completed.
In Conclusion
Your website will become the digital face of your business. Henceforth, it is important that you make sure you get a flawless product designed under the supervision of a professional webmaster. There are other several questions that they can ask you as well such as,
- Are there going to be overtime charges for working after the regular business hours or on off-days?
- How often are invoice payments will be transacted – whether 30, 60 or 90 days?
- Or is there any interest fee for late payments?
Just like them, you should also be prepped with the right answers for them.