How to choose a website design company
With so many different website design companies out there & so many to choose from, it can be really hard to narrow down the pool and finally decide which web design agency to choose to run with.
After 10 years in the website design and development industry, as you can imagine, we as a company have learned a few things about what it takes to be a great Ecommerce & website development agency, so lets take a look at what we recommend that you should look for in your web developers and how to go about ensuring that you choose the right one….
First and foremost, please Leave it to the professionals!
One of the things that we see on almost a weekly basis is people coming to us to complete their website after having attempted to do it themselves and made a right ‘hash job’ of it. Just as a mechanic usually won’t touch your car after someone else has already tried (and failed) to work on it, we take the exact same attitude when it comes to websites – mainly for legal reasons. Why?..let me explain….
Let say for examples sake that you or another website design company had already started to work on your website and (knowingly or not) they just happened to leave some errors (or ‘bugs’ as we in the industry like to call them) in the code of your website – then at some point in the future something went wrong with your website, maybe it crashed or was hacked due to vulnerability issues in the coding, then we as a company would be leaving ourselves open to possible law suits for website coding that we did not even create as it would be very hard to prove when/where an error in the code (that allowed said hacking) came from.
Long story short, we need to be able to vouch for EVERY single website that we as a company put our names to.
The Web agency should not have a policy of outsourcing your project
India is great for a lot of things, but when you give your website design project to the United States or the United Kingdom-based company, you don’t expect the graft work to be done by a remote worker in India, but sadly that is the case with many website development companies out there due in part to the comparably cheap hourly cost of labour out in Asia.
Here is an example of how the process usually works….
- You need a website and so you visit for example UsBasedWebDesignCompany.com.
- You like what their packages and what they appear to be offering, so you purchase a web design package for $1500
- UsBasedWebDesignCompany.com gets your project brief and finds out what you need from your website
- UsBasedWebDesignCompany.com then contacts their cheaper web design colleagues out in India (whom they have a consistent working relationship with due to the amount of business given to them).
- They give developers in India the required domain name as well as details of your project and pay them $450 – just a small fraction of what they charged you!
It wouldn’t be so bad if they were to actually reflect the cheap price they are paying in the amount that they charge to you, but this is very rarely the case.
They should at least speak half-decent English
If you are looking for a web design company to work with, you need to have be able to have half-decent communication with them so that you can easily inform them of any updates or changes that you would like made to your websites.
If communication is an issue and you are unable to communicate with effectively, then this can lead to delays in the completion of your website project.
One of the common complaints that we hear from current customers who have tried other companies is that their previous webmaster did not even speak English and could not understand them properly.
A cheaper price is not the be all and end all
This is another one that we come across all too often. People tending to go for the first company they come across that gives them the lowest priced quote for their project.
Sometimes, paying just that little bit more can get you someone who is 100 times more capable, more professional as well as more able.
As the saying goes: “if you pay peanuts, you should expect to get monkeys!”.
Go for the company that best seems to understand both you and your project
As you set out on your journey to have a website created for you, there will be a stage when you are contacting different companies, letting them know your project details, obtaining quotes etc. It is at this stage that could prove to be one of the most important stages of your web design project because there will be several clues you will be able to obtain from the companies you obtain that will let you know whether or not they are the right people to work on your website.
A few things to look out for are:
- Do they seem knowledgeable
- Can you tell where they are based – are there any give-aways…… in the background noise for example?
- Are they too pushy and seem to just want you to pay up
- Do they have an existing website design portfolio that you are able to take a look at
- Will they try to charge you extra for additional minor changes to your website once it’s been completed
Conclusion
I know that it can be a very scary time when looking for the right company to give your website design project to – it can seem like a minefield. But there are a few things that you as an individual can do to give yourself a chance of choosing the right web design agency from the start which will pay dividends in being a lot less stressful for you in the long run.
So be sure to take our advice and stick to the steps mentioned above in how to choose the right website design company, and you will not go far wrong!