How to choose a web design company
Introduction
Welcome, for this blog post I decided to write about how you should go about choosing the best web design company for you. This article is intended for people who run a small to medium sized business and want to establish an online presence, but don’t know where to start with choosing a web designer. There are many web design companies out there some better than others. This article will look at how to go about choosing the right web design company for you.
Firstly it’s not strictly on topic, but let’s look at whether you should create the website yourself. Good web design companies do not tend to come cheap, so if you may consider saving money and creating the website yourself. This will most likely be a false economy. Just as you would hire a plumber to fit your central heating or a mechanic to fix your car you should hire a web design company to build you a website. The truth, that the DIY industry may try to ignore, is that experts do a better job than amateurs. There is of course always the exception to the rule, but when people are working day in and day out creating websites they are going to learn more about it than someone who does it as a hobby or uses the dreaded save as html option in Microsoft Office.
If you want to create a website properly it is going to require at a minimum learning the basics of web design, xhtml/css and specific equipment and software. You will need to take a course at your local college to pick up the very basics. Which will take considerable time and money. Hiring a web design company is going to allow you to focus on your own business and get your website up and running more quickly saving you money. There are more than enough reasons to get the professionals in and the next challenge is choosing the best company for you.
Step 1 – Research Web Design
Choosing the best web design company for you is probably the most difficult and most important decision to be made about your new website. Getting this decision correct can mean the difference between your website succeeding and failing. If you are willing to put some effort in to learn a little about web design it could seriously pay off in the long run. Try visiting web design forums and buy a web design magazine. The web design magazine ‘.net’ (called Practical Web Design if you’re not in the UK) is probably the best around. A basic understanding of what’s good and bad in web design will be very useful when choosing your web design company.
Step 2 – Word of mouth
Just as with all the trades (plumber, joiner, etc.) the best way to choose a web design company is through recommendation. If you know someone who has used a web design company and has had a good experience then the best place to go is probably to that company.
Step 3 – Search for companies and compile a short list
If you can’t get any recommendations then you will have to spend some time researching web design companies. It’s best to start by looking for companies in your area. You support the local economy and you have easy access to the company. Start by creating a check list of what you want from your website. Search for companies that offer what you want, look at their website and if you like what you see then add them to a short list.
Step 4 – Review Portfolio
The best way to evaluate a web design company is by reviewing the previous work in their portfolio. If your not going by recommendation then their previous work is the only thing that can indicate to you whether they are any good. One problem is how you evaluate the portfolio. You will of course look through it to see whether you like the visual appearance of the sites they have built, but there is more to a good website than whether it looks nice. You can use some techniques to evaluate whether their websites are well built which are explained below.
Check for errors in the website
The W3C is an organisation that sets standards for web design. Their website has a service to check for errors in the code of a website. Go to http://validator.w3.org/ and enter the website address you want to check. If the page shows a green bar then all is good, if it shows a red bar then there are error on the page. If there are errors it’s not the end of the world the website will most likely still work fine, but if the website is error free it shows that the company puts care into building their sites properly.
Check sites in browsershots.org
The most popular web browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer, many people are not aware that others even exist, but there are others the most popular of which is Mozilla Firefox. More importantly than whether the website passes the W3C test is whether it works in these other web browsers. If it doesn’t you could lose a lot of potential customers by having a website that doesn’t look or work as intended for a large percentage of people. The w3schools website, found at http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp, shows the current popularity of each web browser.
You can check that the web design companies website works in all major browsers by using a website called http://browsershots.org/. Go to the site and enter the website address of some of the sites in the companies web design portfolio. There are many check boxes that you can tick, but the important ones to tick are:
- Linux – Firefox 2.0
- Windows- Firefox 2.0, MSIE 6.0, MSIE 7.0
- Mac– Safari 2.0, Safari 3.0
Browsershots.org will then return pictures of how the website looks in these different web browsers. It may take some time to return the results, but the site will give you a web address that you can bookmark and check the results later. If the website you check does not look pretty much the same in each picture then cross the company off your short list.
Check for usability features
The easier your website is to use the more people are likely to use it so when you look at the sites in the web design portfolios you should keep an eye out for features like a navigation bar that is consistent across all pages, a breadcrumb trail, a site map, easy to read text and an uncluttered page layout.
Look for sites in a similar area of business
Look in their portfolio for previous websites they have built for businesses in a similar industry to yours, it’s certainly not essential that they have experience in your industry but it could be an advantage.
Step 5 – Get in touch
Get in touch with the companies that you like the look of and talk to them about what you want. Get quotes from several companies and compare what they have to offer, but don’t automatically go for the cheapest, because they may not be the best value for money.
Step 6 – Avoid low prices
Avoid per-page and per-hour prices (unless there is a maximum price set). Good web design is a time consuming process and will not come cheap. It is not advisable to choose a web design company that promises you a website within a week or two for a couple of hundred pounds. Remember that as with most things you get what you pay for.
Step 7 – Contact previous clients
Looking through a companies portfolio can give you an idea of the quality of the work they produce, but it won’t necessarily help you to know whether the company is good to work with or whether the final result was actually what the client wanted. It can be a good idea to get in touch with some of their previous clients to ask if they had a good experience with the company. Just go to the websites of some of there client’s find an email address and send them a polite email. This stage was left until after you have created a short list so that you don’t have to contact lots of compnaies previous clients wasting both their time and yours.
Step 8 – Get a contract
It is very important that whatever web design company you choose you get a contract detailing how much the website will cost, what dates major milestones should be completed by, who will be responsible for extra costs, who owns the copyright etc. Also, make sure that the company registers you as the administrative contact for your domain name, otherwise it will belong to them not you and if you want to stop dealing with the company or fall out with them you don’t want to have trouble getting it back. Although you would most likely be able to claim it back by making an appeal to WIPO, but that costs money.
Additional Notes
Normally a web design company would not expect full payment upfront. Payment is usually made in stages when major deliverables are met. The stages at which payment should be made should be agreed upfront and documented in the contract. You may expect to pay when the design is complete, then when the build is complete.
If you want your website to be online as quickly as possible then it is very important that you make yourself available to your designer. One of the most common causes of delay to a project is waiting on the client.
You may have a clear idea of what you want your website to be like and ultimately since you’re paying your designer will probably create whatever you want, but they will advise you if they don’t consider something to be a good idea and if you want a successful website it is probably a good idea to listen. Assuming you have followed some of the tips here and managed to find a good web design agency then your designer will know what they are talking about and will be trying to create a website that achieves your goals so it is a good idea to listen to them and take their advice.