27 January 2010
Hi Joe,

I'm lucky in that I have a great deal of experience in back and frontend design but know too well the problems faced by projects managed by those who focus too much on one side!

I would suggest that you ask prospective bidders to give you an example of how they would produce the user interface for a simple backend eg a signup form. You will get many different solutions but this should give you an idea of the quality you could expect.

It's absolutely critical that the UI works well otherwise nobody will get to experience the power of the backend!

Hope this helps.

27 January 2010
Hi Joe. It might help your process if you list, in the proposal, what your back-end development will entail.

If you can tell a prospective design firm that you require, for example, a designer who can read your PHP code (which has x, y and z features and requires a and b interface elements but must avoid c and d elements) well enough to integrate your app with their interface you'll help select for businesses who have that capability and can follow instructions. It will go more smoothly if you find a designer who has a reasonable understanding of the language your code is written in.

I'd recommend also asking about their experience with usability testing and whether they can offer that as a service. Ask to see a portfolio of similar jobs they've worked on so you can experience some of their interface designs first hand. This, more than the questionnaire, will help you make an informed decision about whether a company's work is a match for yours.

Asking them what their biggest usability nightmare has been and how they overcame it should generate an informative response about the company's problem-solving abilities and how well they understand the nature of interface design.

Hope this is helpful!

28 January 2010
Hey Joe,

Like many of the people here, I'm a hybrid developer myself having experience daily in both backend and frontend development.

Typically I would start by creating a list of requirements for the site, such as does it need to adhere to a certain WCAG priority [http://tinyurl.com/yet8fak]. This can almost immediately exclude some providers, for example this client needed WCAG1 and 2 plus a few extra bits as well [http://tinyurl.com/ybjq7r6]. Once you've got this list of requirements, use it as a score card and make your tender (and the responses) part of the scoring system.

Consider/score them on the following examples:

* Are their sites XHTML and CSS compliant, either strict or transitional? Good HTML layout improves SEO.

* Do their sites adhere to the Disability Discrimination Act?

* Are they following the correct legal requirements for a website in the UK? http://tinyurl.com/y88ppl9

* Are their sites Web Content Accessibility Guide (WCAG) priority 1, 2 or 3 compliant (if required)?

* Do they work across all the major browsers such as Internet Explorer 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3, Safari 3/4, Opera 9/10 and Google Chrome? You can test this yourself, and if you have Windows 7 Pro or greater you can follow my guide here [http://tinyurl.com/yafvpsj].

* Are they correctly set up for Search Engine Optimisation? If they're using back-hacks or cheats to artificially bump the site higher in the rankings then this will fail long term as the sites likely to get banned.

* How indexable is the content? If they're going to use a CMS, are the pages hidden behind dynamic code (view source to check this and check if there's any code padding the top of the page or throughout it). If pages in their sites are being delivered using query string vars like page.php?pageid=23&content=header etc etc, although indexers like Google can take it, its far better to have a static layout of your pages like our CMS which publishes static pages from a dynamic database.

* Are your clients selling services and/or products online and have the correct security and distance selling compliance?

* Quality of content layout. Is the site information rich? How easy was it to understand what the site was about and then find the information you needed? Was it around 3 clicks away from the home page? Don't get bamboozled by whiz-bang-wallop features/special effects. End of the day, the site has to be easily readable and approachable.

* Check their hosting platform. If they're on a reseller package then consider how the site will perform under heavy load during peak time. Consider how scalable that platform is for future updates/requirements to the site. You can test the speed and reliability of a site by installing the Firebug [http://tinyurl.com/2z4tvg] add-on to Firefox. It'll give you an indicated on how fat and how fast their sites are and their server performance. If you can test those results against similar sites by different providers.

Hope this helps! Jay.

28 January 2010
Hi Joe

We have excellent experience of front end development, many people don't realise the importance of the front end.

Make sure you ask about the following

- Do they code to W3C standards? This can have a dramatic impact on SEO and the sites ability to be viewed the same in all browsers.

- Do they offer cross-browser support for their sites

- Are the following all standards down to the smallest details. IE, when creating a portfolio page for a photography website will they create the page as portfolio.asp or photography-portfolio.html? The latter would rank higher in search engines.

* Do they offer basic SEO as standard with full SEO campaigns when you get serious.

* What is their portfolio like? Any large name clients? Is there name at the bottom of each site or can it be verified? Do they have testimonials?

There's a ton of different things to ask, but I hope these few will be enough to get you thinking...

23 February 2010
Hey Joe,

The most important thing you can do is talk to their customers, if they aren't willing to provide several references you can speak to about dealing with the company, then run for the hills.

If you're planning on them doing the graphical design work, make sure you look at their portfolio as well to ensure the quality of their design work is up to your standards.

19 May 2010
I think it's important to have a good look at the portfolios of those companies you intend to approach first.

From their portfolios you should be able to pick 3 which are capable of doing what you require.

This is much better than sending out a brief to many companies.

Ask about the process they follow and if they test using outside or in house testers. This will show you how they decide to place key elements on the page and make the design intuitive to its users

If possible go and talk to them as this will give you a better idea as to whether or not you can work with them well, this is probably the most important factor as they are all probably capable of doing a great job based on their previous work.

I hope this advice gives you some practical pointers.

Best wishes,

DoodleIT Ltd
North Wales

19 May 2010
Checkout the RFI and RFP standards at http://www.stndrd.org/ there's a really useful checklist that helps to give you some ideas of what you should be looking for suppliers to answer.

http://www.stndrd.org/files/Stndrd_RFP_Checklist.pdf