How to communicate with a website designer?

[Sherlyn33]

Hi everyone. This is Sherlyn, I’ve been in the business industry for 21 years, this is my first time to do online business and it is hard for me because I am not a  computer person. All of my business is in physical store. I want to be honest to ask you a help and I want to learn more on this online digital selling store. Your response will be so much appreciated and thank you in advance.

[maxpete]

Welcome to the Community @Sherlyn33! Thank you for asking your question and I appreciate the vulnerability here too. 

Tagging a few online experts who can potentially weigh in with some advice! @SSB_YVR, @uniwebdigital, and @DinaLRosenberg 

[DinaLRosenberg]

Keep in mind that designers are going to plug in your photos and your words. So I think the best bet would be for you to create a word document with the words/photos laid out. 

If you can't lay the photos into the document, then label your photos so the designer knows exactly what goes where (home page, etc).

You also need to figure out the navigation of your site- how are you organizing the merchandise to be sold.

I recommend you take a look at other sites to see how they do it.

[SSB_YVR]

Hey Sherlyn!

Welcome to the community!

It can be daunting I get that. Honestly, just be straight up with them, and tell them you have a limited understanding and will need support with different things. I think that would help smooth things over from the get go.

I use GPT to help refine my goals and what I want to get out of a service. 

I would highly suggest telling them that you want your website to be set up with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as one of the main goals.
The Canadian government had a grant available for small businesses to help get them set up online and to modernize their online presence, one of the things I learned from my SEO advisor was that doing a couple of blog posts every week helps you rank higher in Google. By doing a few blog posts we went from being ranked over 100 on google to now ranking in the top 10 in Canada for "Best Burgers" and "Smash Burgers".

There are loads of great designers in the Square network and they will be able to help you get set up.