Since the Web is such an important area of your business, we’ve put together a checklist to help you choose a Web partner. Use this checklist as a guide when evaluating Web development companies.

If you have any questions or you just need some additional help, please don’t hesitate to call Timberline’s President, Blake Ellis, at 866-388-8377 ext. 201. Good Luck!

Getting Started

· Consider who within your organization is the best person to make decisions about the design and technology to be used on your Web site. If no one internally knows much about the technology involved and how to evaluate competing proposals, bring in someone who does know.

· Before you create a Request for Proposal (RFP) and solicit bids from several Web developers, be sure you can:

a) Write a meaningful RFP and/or specification, and
b) Evaluate the proposals you get back.

At Timberline, we’ve seen many RFPs, but very few that were appropriately done. In fact, we had experience with one RFP that received bids ranging from $17,000 to $115,000! Clearly, the expectations in this RFP were poorly defined, and this organization had to start all over.

· Plan a reasonable budget —and be sure it includes not just development costs, but marketing expenses as well. Timberline has developed a simple concept we call the one-third/twothirds rule: You should plan on spending one third of your budget to design, construct, and launch the site, and two thirds of your budget for online marketing and adding new functionality after launch. If you don’t promote your site and enable potential customers to find it, you may as well have a billboard in a basement!

· Budget for the time commitment. Launching a new eCommerce Web site takes time for planning, design, data migration, and testing -- regardless of the Web developer with whom you choose to work.

· Confirm that your vendor offers Web marketing services to help put your Web site in front of potential buyers. Most Web development companies don’t focus on the marketing aspects of a Web site—they simply focus on the technology, and not how the technology enables you to sell stuff! The ideal vendor should offer expertise in all three of the following:

a) Pay-Per-Click search engine advertising, and comparative shopping networks
b) Email campaigns
c) Search engine optimization

Cultural Considerations

· Is the vendor a Web partner you can trust, and one that represents a good “cultural” match with your company? Operating a successful ecommerce Web site is not an event—it’s a continuous process, and you should find a partner with whom you can work over the long term. Consider your ongoing needs for site maintenance, adding new functionality, and most importantly, online marketing.

· Is the vendor a stable and longstanding firm? Be sure they are in business to stay in business. Ask for references, and then call existing clients.

Technical & Budget Considerations

· Does the vendor offer the best solution for your company in the long term? Some ecommerce systems cost less initially, but because of poor shopping cart functionality, lack of reliability, or bad design, they cost you more in the long run, through lost sales and excessive maintenance. The most expensive system many not be a good match either, because it may offer functionality you’ll never need, or be costly and complex to manage or modify. Find someone who can guide you through the decision -- and consider the total cost over 3 to 5 years , not just the initial acquisition cost.

· Can the vendor integrate your Web site with your inventory and fulfillment software? The last thing you want is to spend lots of time typing information into multiple systems just to process each order, or try to manually reconcile inventory and manage online product availability. Integration of your software systems is the key to efficiency.

· Does the vendor offer reliable hosting? You want a hosting setup that is robust and well-managed, so your site responds quickly even during its heaviest traffic, and very rarely suffers downtime.

· Ask about monitoring services. Does the vendor monitor your site continuously and proactively with a pager system? Avoid vendors who will rely on you to call them when your site is down.

Marketing Considerations

· Is the vendor’s ecommerce software designed specifically for Direct Marketers? Off-the-shelf shopping cart systems often cannot be modified to accommodate the way you do business. In fact, Timberline has had experience with several “off-the-shelf” systems, and their shortcomings inspired us to create our own eCommerce system specifically intended for Direct Marketers -- Timberline’s customizable and flexible TI Commerce system.

· Does the platform handle product discounting, coupons and other promotional tactics you plan to employ?

· Does the shopping cart system offer statistical reporting or “Web Analytics”? Can you track sales back to the original source code, whether it was from the Web or a direct mail piece? Can the system capture crucial metrics like the shopping cart abandonment rate? If you have to purchase an Analytics package separately, it could add thousands – even tens of thousands – to the annual cost of your online business

· Does the vendor understand the basic principles of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Search engines are your most effective source of new customers online, so be sure your Web site is designed to be search engine friendly, not search engine hostile. Effective SEO begins with the actual data structure of your site, so if your site is not designed from the start with SEO in mind, it will be more difficult to optimize it at a later date.

· Can the ecommerce system be crawled by search engine spiders? SEO efforts are useless if a site is technically unable to be crawled and indexed by Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines. Spiders typically stay out of “Dynamic” sites with long, complex URLs containing session ids and other variables

· Can the system withstand the anticipated traffic?

· Usability: Look at the vendor’s portfolio, and try to actually use some of the sites they’ve developed. Web sites with lots of Flash animation are eye catching, but they can take a long time to load and can potentially aggravate the online user. Envision your typical customer when considering the kinds of bells and whistles you need.

· Can you regularly update your site with specials, promotions and seasonal changes? Can these changes be made with ease? Will you be able to control them yourself, or must you contact the developer and have them make changes?