Your website is your biggest tool online for winning over customers and making a sale. They are your main point of customer service and critical in whether you win or lose a customer for life.
You need to choose the right web design company for your business website needs. You may need a whole new website or to update an old website that isn’t really working anymore.
How do you know what to look for and how to choose the right website design company for you?
Keep reading for 7 of the key things to keep in mind when hiring a web design company.
1. Where Do You Even Start?
If you’ve never hired a website design company before it can be hard to know where to begin to look.
One of the first things to do is to figure out what you want. Of course, you aren’t going to know everything, if you did you wouldn’t need to hire someone. If you can have a plan for what you want to hire them to do and how you want your website to function.
Having a clear plan beforehand will save a great deal of time and money when you are creating your vision. If you don’t have a vision going in, you could end up spending time and resources creating it through trial and error.
Even with the best web design guru making the site for you, if you don’t know what you want it’s more likely they’ll give you at least some features you don’t want or some design characteristics that don’t fit the vision in your head.
A great way to come up with some ideas is to search other websites in your niche and in other industries. Think of websites that really stood out and why. Do your own research.
2. You Have a Plan. Who Will Build It?
So now you have a plan for what you want your website to look like and what functions you want it to have. This will more than likely change at least a little by the time it’s up and running.
Once you give your ideas to the website design company, they’ll be able to tell you what can work and what isn’t practical. They’ll have their own proposals for what they think will be the most functional and successful for your business.
3. Local Website Design Companies
The benefit of finding a local website design company is that you can meet face to face. They will also have knowledge of the city, business, and community they are creating local content for.
Communication can be easier when you can meet face to face. It allows them to have greater input on promotional materials, shoot videos and images on location and gives the business relationship a stronger connection.
Check online reviews of local businesses that do website design. Ask other business owners in your own network, if there is anyone they recommend.
You don’t have to use a local company, after all, that’s the magic of the world wide web.
4. Searching Online for a Web Design Company
There are many great places online to find an awesome web design company. Most websites will have a link or contact information for their web designer somewhere on their page.
If you’re on a website you like be sure to bookmark or take note of the information for when you need to hire someone to do your website makeover or launch.
It’s always a good idea to check online reviews for website design companies and freelancers to ensure they deliver what they promise and that everything is legit.
Check out their portfolio and visit the websites they’ve listed. Make sure they are real companies and that they are in fact happy with the services provided by your potential web designer.
5. Communication is Key
One of the biggest things you can do to ensure building your website and finding the right company to do it is a successful venture is to ensure clear communication and everything in writing.
It’s easy during a conversation over coffee at Starbucks or in passing on the phone for both you and the web designer to think you’re on the same page as far as your website goes when in reality you’re not even the same library.
Once the details of what you want and what they plan to deliver are all worked out, be sure to get those in a contract with a deadline and a specified amount of work for a specific amount of money.
6. It’s All In The Details
Web design is one of those things that can start out with one vision that will take a day or two and evolve into a design that requires weeks of work instead. If there isn’t a specific amount of work for pay, stated one of the two parties can end up being shocked as the hours of labor pile up.
No web designer wants to promise they can get a website up live in a week for a low amount only to have a customer upset when they don’t understand rewriting the entire website design and programming when they decide to make several “simple changes: isn’t as easy.
No business owner wants to sign a contract promising hourly pay for a job they think will take six hours and end up paying for six full days either.
7. Where Do You Rank?
You want to make sure the web design company knows how to get you seen. It’s not enough to just have a website, people have to be able to find it so you need an effective strategy for Search Engine Optimization.
Don’t believe false promises. No one can get you shooting to the number one spot of Google search results within a day or two. It takes a solid strategy to get you there in a way that is long-lasting and effective in turning views into sales.
When they make promises for their results, be sure to see where their previous clients rank in search results. It will show you a lot about their effectiveness in this area.
The Right Web Design Company Makes Life Easier
The right website design company can really be the difference in your success, so it’s important you know what to look for. Hopefully, these tips will help you find the perfect website designer to take you to new levels of success.
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