Anyone who requests an offer for a new website or a redesign should make sure that the following requirements are also covered:
- You never know how people will access your website – responsive and mobile-first design is mandatory.
- Your audience is aging, at least in older industrial nations… Visitors might be visually or otherwise impaired – keep your website accessible (Accessibility).
- If your website could not be found in search engines, it doesn’t exist. On setup, a new website should be well prepared for search engines bots to be indexed (On-Page SEO).
- Think about slow mobile connections – short loading times help to speed up your website and is a ranking signal for search engines.
- If your websites targets EU citizens, it must be GDPR compliant to address data protection and privacy law in the European Union and the European Economic Area.
- Of course, “security by design” is important – your website also should have an SSL certificate for encrypted connections and a firewall installed.
- How about sustainability? Will the installed software solution still be supported in a few years?
- The service provider or web agency should provide a basic training for employees to edit content on your website.
- Hosting websites in data centers requires a lot of energy. Some hosters offer climate-neutral hosting by balancing their CO2 emissions with certificates or their own green projects.
- Every website needs maintenance to keep the software always up-to-date. Regularly backups to restore the installation are an essential.