Decided you need a website to take your business to the next level? Your next challenge is to choose a website designer. On the face of it, this may seem like a simple enough task. Simply call a few local website companies get a couple of quotes, check out their reviews and if you get on with them and the price is right you go ahead. But this is where you could be making the wrong choice for your business in the long run.
Before you commit to a website company for your new site read on to learn our top tips to help you research web designers before you sign any contracts!
5 things you must check before choosing your website designer.
Before we get into the checklist you will likely be considering your budget. However, cost should NOT be your first consideration. A website that is cheap and seems like a good deal may not tick your boxes for the medium to long term. Even a relatively cheap website now can turn out to be a bottomless money pit if it causes you issues in the future; you may simply be delaying the cost. Establish what the most you can afford now and on an ongoing basis to fund your website before you get quotes. Don’t forget to check with your local council and business hub if there are any grants available too. And please, please, consider the points below and do your research before you commit to anything.
- What platform will your new website be built in? Different platforms have different benefits, so it is important to choose the right one for your business. Web designers tend to specialise in one platform, so all website quotes are not equal! If your new site is going to be built on Wix or the company’s own CMS (content management system) then should you wish to move your website to another provider, you will likely have issues in the future. Using a website builder like WordPress means you will be able to move it with relative ease, change who hosts your site or host it yourself if you wish. Not all website agencies stick around forever so this should be a consideration to enable you to have options in the future without having to have your site rebuilt.
- Look at their previous work, not just the sites they suggest! View these sites on both desktops, large screens and various mobiles. Click around the site, does it view properly on all devices? If text is moving around, squashed to one side of the screen or the other. Or badly laid out they may not be used to building responsive websites. If this is the case it will impact your search engine rankings, keeping you lower in the search results and ultimately bringing you less traffic.
- Are there spelling mistakes, simple errors or warning pages? The website designer may not have been responsible for writing the content of the websites they design but they should be spell-checking the content. Are there sentences starting in lower case and upper case and mish-mash of fonts or font sizes that aren’t for design effect? Sites should include an SSL certificate which is the little padlock at the top of the page and have no broken links * when you get a 404 error page. Be wary if you come across these on any sites a web design company has built.
- Are links, phone numbers, email addresses etc clickable? Making it easy for the website user to use the site? Are there regular call to action buttons throughout the pages or are these left to the bottom of the page – or worse still not included at all, apart from the contact us page! These are all conversion optimisation techniques that a good website designer should be integrating as standard in any website and should be in yours too.
- How is there customer service once your site has gone live? This is worth speaking to any of their clients directly and asking their opinion on the response time, and how easy it is for them to make changes themselves without the need to liaise with the website designer. Check out what their support charges are. Will your site have regular backups in case something goes wrong at any point? Ongoing service is a problem many businesses we speak to face with their website company, so don’t forget to do your research on this aspect too!
The big thing to remember is your website should last you 3-5 years, maybe longer. So you need to be able to work with the designer over this time and beyond.
Now you have a good idea of the important things to check before you choose your website design company, you should have more confidence in being able to make the right choice for your business.
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Short on time and need a hand researching companies, specking out your new site or creating content for the site that will engage your clients and generate enquiries, then call us now. We can even manage the whole process from start to finish for you so you can get on with what you do best.