Choosing a web designer

If you are a visiting this site then there's a good chance that you may be looking for someone to build your website. Since this isn't something you need to do every day you may feel that you know very little about web design and what criteria you should use in finding a company to develop your site. We hope to shed some light on this for you in this article.

What can we assume about your business?

• You either own or are part of a small or medium sized business.
• You have a got a realistic budget available.
• You're looking for an experienced company to undertake the development and not looking to call in favours from friends or family.
• You are looking to grow your business and you are willing to invest some time and money to achieve that.
  

Before you do anything about choosing a company to work with you should have given some time to defining a set of goals or objectives for your website. Put simply, you need to work out what you want your website to do for your business.

Don't get hung up on the techno-babble you may have picked up about web design - acronyms like PHP, ASP, CMS or XHTML; if you choose the right web designer you shouldn't need to know about any of that as that's their area of expertise. The important role you have to take on is to create your ideal wish líst from the perspective of your business. Nothing complicated, just things like:

1. Do you want the website to help sell your products or services?
2. Help you to find new employees?
3. Communicate with your customers?

Once you have defined what you want you can let your web designer come up with the best solution for your business and your budget. If possible, write these things down to form a brief for the designer. It should include what specific targets you want to achieve and over what time period.

Now that you have your brief you can now decide which web designer is right for you:

1) Decide on Geography.
A local company will have more incentive in ensuring that you're a happy customer. On the negative side, if things go wrong then they are near enough for you to sit down with them to resolve any issues. That's not to dismiss a company that isn't nearby, especially if they have come to your attention through a referral. Using modern technology it can be quite easy to communicate effectively over a distance although quite often, nothing beats establishing a face to face relationship.

2) Check them out
Visit each company's website and look for the following:

Quality content.
Are they interested in solving problems? Does the writing make sense to you as a consumer and written in plain English?

Do they offer just a simple package price?
That may not be the best approach as it can signify a template approach to development where you are just poackaged up as just another client to be processed.

Presentation.
Partly this is about the design of their website (their site design is a good indicator of the type of approach they will bring to your site), but also the type of company. Do they seem like the type of people who you can work with? Do they seem to to have the right level of experience?

Portfolio.
Look for their past clients and work, their portfolio and case studies. Do they seem adaptable and able to work with different industries? Ideally their testimonials include full names, which means they're not trying to hide anything. Web designers without some sort of portfolio or client líst are either bad or lazy; either way, they're not for you.
Contact info. Are you forced to fill out an online form to get in contact? Is there a phone number listed? A physical address (other than a PO Box)? You'll need to speak to someone before moving forward, so be sure you can actually call and get a hold of a human being. Companies without phone numbers or addresses are typically located in a basement.

3) Revise Your List.
Based on your research, choose your top three candidates.

Call them up. Ideally, don't email or fill out an online form if you can just pick up the phone. You want to make sure that you're dealing with a professional company, so call them up and see how they respond. A good web design company will want to hear you talking about your business. They will listen to your issues and then will try to assess whether or not you're a good client for them

Meet them.
Assuming your short list of companies are all relatively local, arrange to meet them. A good company will want to come and see you to get a real understanding of your business. This process is sometimes referred to as Client Discovery. The aims to give the web designer enough information to prepare a detailed proposal for you. You'll also want to ensure that you're comfortable dealing with them, and a face-to-face meeting is the best way to ensure you are compatible.

Proposals.
Try to get three proposals so you get a good range. If you have fewer than that then you won't see all the options available to you. If you have too many proposals, it just gets too confusing. You should expect the web design company to provide you with the proposal within a week of your meeting.

Assess.
How do you sort the wheat from the chaff?

Problem solving. Have they put forward a proposal that makes sense to you and is rin relatively plain English (there's bound to be some technical terms included but they should always be explained).

How comprehensive is it?
Did they cover off all of your issues and have they provided appropriate solutions for any issues you raised?

Follow up.
Building the website should only be part of the solution. Have they covered things like helping you to market the site, training you in managing the site, proposed how they will help with maintenance and minor development, what sort of warranty period is there and how long does it last? Importantly, do they guarantee their work?

Ideas.
A good web design company might have some really good ideas that you had not considered. These can demonstrate creative thinking about your business and show how their expertise can help you.

Project Plan.
Have they given you an idea of how long the project will take and what your involvement will be. Does that fit into your deadlines and milestones?