1. The Goals. The goals of your website are more important than anything else because, hey, that’s why you’re making it! A development firm will need to know the the goals so they can, to the best of their abilities, help achieve your site’s goals in the creation of it. A site designed to ring a phone number is completely different than an ecommerce site – the design, the flow, the information… it’s all different.
2. Communication. The communication between you and your development firm is very important! You may think speaking over the phone or in person is the best way to get things done, when it reality, that can slow the process down a lot, depending on the project’s needs. Get comfortable with e-mail because that’s all your developer does all day – checks his e-mail. One of the benefits of e-mail is that it’s written down somewhere where it won’t get lost. The developers can come back to everything you’ve said and make sure they’re following instructions correctly. E-mail makes for a very clear communication channel.
3. Examples. You probably have some ideas of what kind of design you’re looking for, but explaining those ideas with words is a very difficult thing to do. To communicate designs more effectively, find several examples of what you’re looking for, what you like, and what you don’t like! You should find at least 10 examples. Good places of where to start… Google: award winning websites. Web 2.0 website designs.
4. Page List. Most likely your website won’t have over 50 pages. If that’s the case, you need to create a list of every page you want and the types of information you want to have on it. You’ll also need to show how these pages are represented in the site navigation – do you place some of them on a main navigation, some in drop downs, on the side, at the bottom, etc.? Your developers can help you answer the latter after they go over your page list, priorities and site goals.
5. Content. A surprise to many, content doesn’t just appear, it has to be written! Most development firms won’t be the ones doing it for you, you’ll have to do it! Spend a good deal of time thinking about how you want to lay out your content and information on the website. Your visitor needs a clear path from everything they could be looking for… funneling their actions down to your main goal or goals. Once you know how you want to organize it, spend even more time writing it. After all, this is what truly makes up your website!
6. Pictures. It helps a great deal to have handy the pictures you want to use and knowing on what pages to use them. Designers will want to organize your page content around your pictures, so sending both pictures and content together will often lead to a better design than sending one and then the next. Even if you know you’ll want to have a picture on a page, but you’re not sure what it is, you’ll want to make the designer aware of that. A lot of designers use the same stock photography websites – sxc.hu, stockxpert.com, istockphoto.com. Don’t use Getty Images, unless you really want to shell out some cash. Oh, and don’t even think about using Google Images. If that came to mind, you’ll need to learn more about copyright law. One more note, when supplying pictures to your designers, make sure you supply high quality images, and nothing embedded into Word either.
7. Open Mind. Through the process, the designers and developers you’ll be working with will have many ideas for your site that may differ from your original plan. Some of these might be good, some might be bad, but it pays to listen. If your developer says that having an all Flash site will hurt your search engine optimization, and therefore, you’re search rankings, it would be good to consider if you would ever want your website to rank in Google and other search engines in the future, otherwise you might be making your website all over again next year.
8. Basic Marketing Plan. Many people expect that when their website goes live, people will automatically see it. Unfortunately, no one visits your website unless something is sending them there, whether it be search engines, business cards, flyers, banner ads, billboards, etc. You need to have some basic marketing ideas to drive traffic to your site. You can communicate these ideas to your developers and they can actually implement ways to track different campaigns for you.
9. Realistic Expectations and Homework. You’ve checked around and you’ve got 10 different quotes for your future website, all around $2000. Your cousin’s friend says he’ll do it for $400. Maybe he’ll create your site, but you need to do your homework and visit websites that he’s done previously, because no developer is going to work at $5.00/hr no matter how simple you convince yourself the work is. The fact is that a well-working website takes time to create, especially if it’s dynamic (loads changing content). I’ve worked with many clients that have wasted valuable time and money with an inexperienced developer their first time round. The old saying is true… you get what you pay for.
10. The Check! Most developers will ask for a percentage up front, but either way, you need to have the cash before you start hiring anyone. After all, you wouldn’t go out to eat with an empty wallet and ask the cook to take a rain check… or maybe ask him to cut the bill up for you in monthly increments?

Hopefully this list will allow you, the client, to design your new website more effectively and more efficiently with your future development firm. Another one that isn’t on this list is the list itself! Funny enough, when you start gathering all these items, you’ll realize plenty of things you’ll want to change about the website. If you can do this ahead of time, it will save you and the developers a lot of headache and money!