Finding a website designerby Tim Barnett, 20-Jan-2005
You have finally decided to revamp the website you launched in 1999 and are now looking for a website designer. So where do start looking? Google of course! You enter the search term website designer in Google, select "pages from Australia" and hit the search button ... hmm … around 600,000 results. You are based in Sydney, so you try searching on "website designer sydney" … still over 150,000 listings.
OK, so there are a lot of website designers out there servicing the Sydney region, even if you decide to take a handful out of the listings on the first page of results, how do you determine which of these website design companies is going to produce you a quality site? By having a quick look at the designer's website you can work out who is bad and who is good, from a visual perspective, but how do you separate the good from the great?
Below are ten tips to help you select a great website design company.
Tip 1 – Make a shortlist .
Don’t just approach one company to design your site, visit the website of a number of web designers and make a shortlist of five or six of those which make a positive first impression.
Tip 2 – Create a brief.
Create a basic brief to give to your shortlist and ask them to respond. The brief will enable your shortlist to provide a response which meets your requirements to some degree. The brief should include information such as:
- An outline of your company and what it does.
- What your objectives are for the site - selling a product, providing information etc.
- What information/functionality you want on your site.
- Your target audience: Kids? Males? Over 65s?
- When you would like the site finished: Be realistic, expecting a new website in one week is a bit ambitious.
- A budget range: You don’t want someone to try and sell you a Ferrari when you only want a Barina.
Tip 3 – A balance of technology and creativity.
Often web designer companies have an advertising or creative background with no understanding of website technology and you end up with a great looking site which does nothing for your business, alternatively some website developers will produce you a site which is highly functional, but is an eyesore and does your brand more harm than good.
A great web design company will have a good understanding of both and be able to provide you a site which is not only visually pleasing but is highly usable and provides you with a useful business tool.
Tip 4 – Do they adhere to standards?
Believe it or not, there are global standards for the development of websites. These standards are determined and published by the World Wide Web Consortium or commonly know as the W3C. The W3C's purpose is outlined on their website:
"In order for the Web to reach its full potential, the most fundamental Web technologies must be compatible with one another and allow any hardware and software used to access the Web to work together"
One of the most basic checks you can do, to determine if a website developer adheres to these standards, is a code validation test. Run the test on the websites of your shortlist to see how compliant they are.
Tip 5 – What about search engine optimisation (SEO)?
A study by Forester Research found that three quarters of consumers use search engines to try and find new websites. If one of your goals for your website is for it to acquire new customers, then building a search engine friendly site is a requirement. Get this part wrong and those potential customers will never find your site and you could be up for hundreds of dollars in redevelopment work further down the track.
Ask your shortlist of designers if they understand the principles of SEO and ask them to explain them to you, after listening to all your shortlisted agency responses, you should be able to sort out those who know what they are doing and those that don’t.
Tip 6 – What is their development methodology?
Building a website is like any project and needs some form of production processes or methodology to ensure a consistent and reliable product is delivered each time.
Ensure your website designer has a methodology and that they explain it to you.
Tip 7 – Do they have a content management system?
Unless you want to be calling on your website designer every time you want to make a small change to your website, a content management system (CMS) is a must. A CMS should allow you to easily update your website content without you needing any web development skills.
Your web designer should have a pre-built CMS which can be easily implemented with your new site. Ensure that the web designer's CMS will output web pages which comply with tips 2, 3 and 4 and once again, ask for reference sites using the CMS.
Tip 8 – Get some quotes
You have given your shortlist a budget in your brief; now see what quotes they come back with. Make sure you ask for an itemised quote so you know what you are getting for you dollars. If you don’t understand what an item is, have them explain it to you.
If a quote is too expensive or too cheap tell the company so and give them an opportunity to explain why - you don’t want to rule out a great website designer if they have misinterpreted the brief.
Tip 9 – Ask for reference sites
It is obviously important to see prior work this web designer has done so make sure you get some reference sites.
Are the reference sites the designer’s complete works? Or maybe they just entered the content for this site? So make sure you also find out what involvement they had in the development of the site and don’t be afraid to ask if you contact the site owner for confirmation.
Tip 10 – Meet face to face
In this telecommunications age in which we live, most of your research in selecting your web design agency is done without even speaking to any of your potential web designers, let alone meeting them.
Depending upon the size and budget of your project, you may want to arrange a meeting with each of your shortlist agencies or just with your final selection.
Meeting face to face will give you an opportunity to ask any questions to determine if an agency can back up what they have put in their response to your brief and can often quickly help you decide if a business relationship with this company will work.
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