First let me say, I am not a website developer here to pitch you. I’m an account manager with Scurto Marketing which involves meeting with property managers to hear their needs, goals and issues then working with a team of developers to help solve problems and increase revenue. So, I understand property managers have many concerns when selecting an online partner to represent their brand but thought it would be helpful to provide some good questions to ask a potential web developer.
So here it goes:
Communication
- Email and chat only? What if you want to talk something out on the phone? Do they have a support or ticket system to keep track of communication?
- Will you have a dedicated account representative, or will you talk to a different person every time?
- Does the company outsource its developers? This is important because sometimes there can be a language barrier.
- Whether a key employee is sick or the world is facing a pandemic it’s good to know what sort of processes are in place so that you’re never left in the dust.
Problems, Feature Requests, and Changes
- This is a big one, if you want to update the content or images on a page or add a blog can you do that by yourself?
- To what extent do you have to involve the developers to make changes on your website? Are those changes included or extra cost?
- It’s important that all parties have a clear understanding of the difference between a problem, a feature request, or a simple content and media updates. Throw some scenarios out there to see what would cost you extra.
- How does the web developer handle these requests? What’s an average wait time for a request? Is there a process for when something needs to be done urgently?
- A great question to ask is what kind of things are we not able to do? This should tell you pretty quickly if your web developer is using a website builder solution like WordPress. In which you may be limited in what you’re able to customize.
- How are they able to handle upgrades for GDPR & CCPA Website Compliancy?
SEO
Often overlooked in the early decison making process, what’s your developer’s viewpoint on SEO? Google’s requirements involve ground-up development to meet its standards to ultimately give you a higher position in search results.
You can ask how the following are handled: page speed, mobile-first, responsive design, technical audits, broken links, schema markup, no follow links, meta tags, and so on. If they are not handled by the developer, what type of access do they provide to your website's code for marketing agencies?
Software Integration
In the vacation rental world, there are only a few web developers that work specifically in our industry and have developed the ability to integrate with software to be considered a “booking engine.”
Ask your developer how this is handled. What options do I have as far as how and when things sync with my software? Will the user or Google experience a “departure” going from the property details page through to a booking confirmation page?
Pricing
As the saying goes, “you get what you pay for.” As we mentioned, there isn’t a ton of options for web developers in the vacation rental market, so everyone has a pretty good idea of what their competitors’ products are and where they stack as far as pricing and services. If you have 15 properties and are not really looking to grow, finding the cheapest solution may be best for you.
On the other hand, if you are looking to grow your properties and keep up with the latest trends to increase your conversion rates you really need to develop a relationship with your web developer that can stay fluid with your company’s needs.
Shameless Plug
We do all of the above. What sets us apart is a very intuitive and advanced CMS and our organic approach to growth. Many companies try to simply build more websites, while we focus on relationships. Due to this drive, we have a stellar approach to support that results in a very happy client base. We typically like to set up a demo so we can show off how our platform can help make our client’s revenue. Anyone interested can reach out to me directly at [email protected] or 850-685-1476.
Learn more about what makes us special here!