If you are thinking of having a web designer build your website then viewing the websites of various web design companies of course is the first step, then moving on to check out their portfolios of web designs should help with your search.
A web design agency should be confident at putting together the right design to suit you and your business needs as well as offering additional services – is he/she an insightful online marketer or can they offer help with printed off-line marketing? View their website pages to get a feel of the kind of client they have worked with previously and look for a variation – brochure websites, e-shops, information or charity websites etc
Your website should be designed for just your business, your web designer should arrange the site and its practical aspects around that, and in doing so should also keep your visitors happy. A good website designer is worth their weight in gold and especially they mention extra services such as online marketing, shop setup etc. Your website is your shop front or your ‘welcome’ to potential or new shoppers who may return to spend money or simply revisit for the information on your site so finding a web designer with varying experience is good.
A web developer needs to wear many hats – that is offer more than one service – from being programmer to website marketer, or from PR representative to researcher. Putting together your site can be much more involved than slotting together a few images and stylish graphics into a couple of pages, tons of hard work goes into building a site and your chosen web developer will take lots of time on your site just through research and discussions as well as styling it and then consideration for longer term issues such as marketing.
A web developer has a great skill and should have the experience and knowledge to be able to put together a fabulous site that works with you and for you. Look at other websites that the company or individual has built and go into that a little deeper – any sign of marketing, search engine optimisation and longer term web maintenance is definitely a positive thing and may give you that indication that web designer has much more to offer.
Posted on September 19th, 2009
