Entrusting your web designing assignment to the wrong hands may prove to be a real costly affair. Leave alone the cost involved, a badly designed, messy website can completely ruin your business and damage your reputation, rather than doing any good. So, on what criteria should you select you web designing firm? Here is a quick checklist of 10 important things you should look for:
1. Web Designing Firm’s Own Website
What’s your impression about their website? Of course, the requirements of each website are different and you can’t expect it to be exactly the same as you want your website to be, but do you think you’d love to have a website like theirs, if you were in their business? It’s okay even if you like their website with a few modifications here and there. But if their website design completely puts you off, then probably it’s an indication that you should look somewhere else.
2. Portfolio
Have a look at their portfolio. Kind of websites they have already designed will give you a fair idea as to what they have in store for you. And if they have designed something related to your niche, nothing can make things more clear than that.
3. Focus on Actual Work, Not the Freebies
Never go by the freebies. Always remember, website designing is what you need. If you can’t get a satisfactory website designed, you’ll be at loss even if you get hundreds of freebies.
4. Specific Requirements
What are your specific requirements? And how good are the designers at meeting them? For example, if you are looking for ecommerce website design, then are they good at integrating payment gateway, shopping cart, CRM, cross selling tools, etc. and taking care of other requisites?
5. Transparency
Are they transparent about their work? What all tools do they use? Is the content part outsourced or done in-house? What would be the image sources? Will the final output be W3C compliant? A good web design firm should be able to address all your concerns satisfactorily.
6. Cool Design & Ease of Use
Don’t forget, this is the main job you are hiring the designers for. If the website is not appealing to the eyes, it’s worth nothing, no matter what all great utilities it offers. Add to this the ease of use (I don’t want to add eleventh point for that, I’ve already given the title J)
7. Technical Knowledge
Your web designers need not be rocket scientists. But it is imperative that they are up-to-date with the latest developments in web design technology to ensure that your website is not out-of-date even before it is created.
8. Secure and Light Coding
See to it that their coding style is lightweight and secure. Clean coding will help your site load faster and secure coding will prevent against hacking and other exploitation.
9. SEO
If you thought you would start with SEO after the designing part is over, think again – website layout, navigation, architecture, images, content, and so many other elements – everything has to do with SEO. So, before you proceed, find out how well your designers can optimize your site for search engines.
10. Price
This should not need much explanation. But remember, costly need not always mean good. Ensure that you get value for money, and the pricing is within your budget.
Thanks for your information… its really helpful
Thanks for the information it was really helpful. The article provided us some helpful tips in choosing well Web Designing firm.
Great post…!
I especially liked the part that you identified about making sure the design is SEO Friendly!
If the site isn’t structured properly “out of the gate” then many of your SEO efforts will be affected. In my opinion, one of the prerequisites for picking a design firm is to make sure they either have an SEO Division, or at the very least have an SEO Professional on staff.
This way you can have a conversation before the site is delivered that covers the SEO factors that have been included in the design of the site.
The other 9 things to look for are valuable as well, the SEO one really rang true with me!
Matt
Nice straight forward guide thanks. 10 good points to consider.
Thanks for the tips. My companies requires a studio to build their new website, do you have any suggestion or studio to recommend ?
web design is a tool in the market today to let your visitors think for a while when they visit your website. Recent studies have shown that most of the visitors get attracted by the design and they stay a bit longer on your website if they like your design. Thanks for sharing….!
Nice article Gouri! I followed you on Twitter because of it. I would like to add to your point 9 regarding SEO. As you said, small biz owners may think of SEO as something to be done to the site after they have received it from the designer. Some still have no idea what SEO even is. Hopefully those that read your article do know and are ready to take your advice.
I would add that any designer is going to say he knows and understands SEO but before you entrust him with YOUR livelihood check out where his past clients come in the serps. Most designers have a portfolio. Look for basic SEO elements on the client’s sites. Do a few relevant searches and see if they are being found on Google’s first page.
That’s great advice. Thanks ! Another important factor when choosing a design firm :
Make them do a sample page on very limited time. If they can, they are not overbooked and you know they’ll have the time to take good care of your contract.
Very helpful. Especially #1 (which I think more than a few people overlook). I also like #5: Are they transparent about their work? What all tools do they use? Is the content part outsourced or done in-house? What would be the image sources? Will the final output be W3C compliant? A good web design firm should be able to address all your concerns satisfactorily.
Jamie
Yes that was a helpful article !!!