Dealing with a web designer

1. Decide what your budget and timescales are.
2. Prepare a thorough brief, providing the background to your business and the web project and explaining what you hope to achieve.
3. Decide what selection process you will use to choose a designer.
4. If appropriate, require designers to sign a confidentiality agreement before you reveal project details or any confidential information.
5. Explain what constraints the designer must work within: for example, matching your existing house style.
6. Work with the designer to develop a specification; establish as clearly as possible what will constitute an acceptable design.
7. Agree a timetable; plan interim targets and agree how progress will be regularly reviewed.
8. Agree what testing will be required during the project and before you accept the completed site design.
9. Establish what will happen if the project starts to run late.
10. Establish what will happen if you want to modify the specification once the project has started.
11. Establish what rights each of you will have to terminate the project once it has started and how any payments would be treated.
12. Require the designer to assign copyright and design rights relating to the site to you, or at least to grant you an appropriate licence.
13. Require the designer to waive any moral rights to be identified as the author or designer of material or to object to how it is used or modified.
14. Ensure that you have an appropriate licence to use any software or source code required to make the site function.
15. Require the designer to warrant that he has the right to any intellectual property used in the site, and to indemnify you against claims.
16. Review any obligations you are asked to agree to (for example, to provide specified material by a certain date) and confirm that these are acceptable.
17. Agree how much the designer will be paid, when payments will be made and whether you will pay any extra expenses.
18. Agree an appropriate dispute resolution procedure in case of any problems during the project which you cannot resolve between yourselves.
19. Prepare agreements with any third parties (for example, if someone else will host the site); establish how everyone will work together.
20. Plan ahead for how the site will be maintained and developed in future; consider whether this needs to be taken into account now.

Cardinal Rules

Do:

• set clear objectives
• expect delays
• specify if the project must achieve a fixed launch date
• ensure that you have appropriate rights to any intellectual property.

Don’t:

• require extravagant penalties for failing to meet deadlines
• change your requirements without agreeing how costs and timescales will be affected
• accept any obligations unless you are confident that you can fulfil them.