Thinking about launching your own online business. Maybe a website with articles with revenue from Google’s Adsense, or a membership site that caters to a certain niche, or even a website that offers unique products for your ecommerce website? Undoubtely your first challenge is the planning and website development. And with more then 52 Million active websites on the net and more on the way it is crucial to your success that you have a great website.

Here are some questions you need to ask if you’re thinking about hiring a webmaster or a website development team.
 

1) Are they familiar with HTML, CSS, and preferably XHTML?

HTML, Hyper Text Metatag Language is the basis of website development. You can’t have a website without an understanding of HTML.
 

2) Are their websites optimized and cross browser compatible?

To add cross browser compatibility and optimization XHTML and CSS are must tools. This is important because not all users have the same browser. If a website looks great in one browser and odd in another, then you run the risk of alienating and losing potential visitors. CSS, DTD, and XHTML are vital when creating cross browser compatible and accessible websites.

According to W3C, World Wide Web Consortium Browser Statistics, as of July 2007:

  • 20% use IE - Microsoft Internet Explorer(IE) 7
  • 36% use IE Version 6
  • 1.5% use IE Version 5
  • 34.5% use FireFox
  • 1.4% use Mozilla (Now known as Firefox)
  • 1.5% use Safari
  • 1.9% use Opera

3) What is the average load time for their websites?

One of biggest reason why a visitor will not revisit a website is because the website did not load fast enough. If your website isn’t optimized to load fast then you’re visitor will leave and find another one that does.

To increase visitor retention a good webmaster will be familiar with using website optimization tools and strategies to help speed up you’re website by optimizing you’re images and you’re code. This can dramatically increase you’re website load up times, and is great way to increase visitor retention.

You can verify your visitors’ average stay period by logging into you’re website statistics. If you have a high percentage of visitors that leave within 1-30 seconds then you should really consider optimizing you’re website. There are many tools that you can use to test website load times such as the Load Time Checker at http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.loading-time-checker.htm
 

4) Which web programming languages also known as server side programming do they work with?

If you plan on having website features such as Comments Box, NewsLetter Sign Up, and other common website features then it is necessary that you’re website development team be familiar one of the many web programming languages. I tend to use Cold Fusion MX but I’ll admit that there is no one perfect web programming language. Each has it’s pros and cons. The question is can your website programmer can use the language effectively.

Some common web programming languages include Cold Fusion MX (by Macromedia) now Adobe, ASP.NET by Microsoft, JSP by Sun Microsystem, PHP Free, and Perl - One of web’s first server side language.
 

5) What type of databases are they familiar with?

A database is used to store information. That information can be anything from a visitor’s email address or an entire article.

There are many databases that a website programmer can use. Most if not all major web programming languages provide support for communicating with major databases. Big names such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, MySQL, and Oracle dominate the database field.

Along with database development, database programming is also necessary to be able to manage data stored in your database. Fortunately in this area there is one major programming language that dominates the database programming world and you’ve probably heard it used before known Query Language. SQL Programming or SQL Query Language works with all of the databases listed above, barring small differences.

So if you need to manage and store data in databases then you will need an SQL programmer, and if possible an RDBMS developer. RDBMS, known as Relational Database Management System is an efficient way of design your tables and how data is managed. A good database design helps to reduce redudant data and increase efficiency. This is important especially for websites that plan on storing and making use of large amounts of data.

There are many other questions to consider, but to find out if a website firm is right for you visit one of their portfolio websites and then contact one of the website owners to ask about their experience with the firm.

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