Choosing the Right Web Design Firm

Choosing a company to design your web site should be similar to how you choose who you make friends with. A good web development firm should be trustworthy, stable, readily available, and capable of helping your business reach its full potential. Just as with a friend, you need to become familiar with a web design company and know how they operate before you can trust them; especially when it concerns the financial security of your business and your employees.

A great web site will reflect well on the business it represents; unfortunately a poor web site will have the opposite effect. When choosing a web design firm, make sure that the firm you choose is able to provide acceptable and comforting answers to any questions you have regarding your web site. To help business owners to know what to look out for, and to ensure that every business gets the service they deserve, we have compiled a series of questions that everybody should ask their prospective web development firm. Make sure that for each question you ask that the web design firm can give you a satisfactory and clear answer.

1. Does the potential development firm have the ability to program in multiple languages? Can the firm explain clearly why they are recommending one language over another?

Often times development firms will choose the program that is most convenient for their staff to use. Make sure they are willing to use the languages that are the best fit for your business model; and that they can show you at least two or three real examples of effective programming language use.

2. Does the firm have the ability to slice using cascading style sheets(CSS)? Are the sites they create friendly to all types of internet capable devices?

Using CSS has many advantages for a web site's functionality. In many instances it can decrease the page loading time by half while allowing for a clean and organized layout on both desktop computers and a full range of handheld devices. It is very important that the site is fully sliced, not just partially. Also, make sure to test their sites out on a mobile device to test how the look.

3. Does the potential firm have not only the ability to build your site, but also the ability to get it ranked on the major search engines? Does the firm have a team dedicated completely to search engine optimization?

A web site might look beautiful, but if nobody sees it, it doesn't really matter. Make sure that the firm can show you at least two or three examples of where they have managed to get their clients highly ranked on the search engine results pages. Even more importantly, have the design firm show you their own search engine rankings.

4. Do the web sites designed by the potential firm have a backend tool that allows you to fully administer the web site? Does this tool make uploading images, files, and text easy?

5. Does the potential firm have analytic software (web site statistics) that will help you understand how you can increase your ROI and conversion rates?

6. Find out what sites they consider to be their top 3 biggest/greatest projects. Ask them to explain to you why they feel each of the projects is so special or why they cost as much as they do. After evaluating the functionality of the site, ask yourself whether or not you were impressed.

7. Does the firm have a clear process laid out from the beginning of a project up through the site launch and beyond? Does the firm clearly define in detail what you can expect from them, who you will be working with, who are their project managers, and if you can meet with them?

8. Does the potential firm own any assets, such as their own building, servers, and databases, or do they rely on outsourcing?

9. What kind of support can the firm offer? Do they have any staff dedicated solely to customer support? Can you meet with the support staff and speak with them personally?

Knowing that a firm has employees dedicated 100% to customer support means that you'll always be able to get proper attention with troubleshooting issues.

10. Does the company show its own personal access stories on the web? Is there evidence online that support the firm's claims of quality and success?

11. Will the firm provide you with a quote that clearly states everything you will be getting and exactly what you'll be paying for? Can you see actual examples of what you will be receiving? Can they build something specifically for your site?

12. Will the perspective company show you a wire-frame (flow chart) of your site before it enters programming? Can they show you a logical plan for building your site?

13. Does the firm have worksheets and tools to help them extract additional ideas and thoughts from you before starting the design process? Can they show them to you upon request?

A well-organized firm should be able to show you these tools upon request, don't accept excuses as to why they might be unable to.

14. Did the firm come up with ideas that you feel went above and beyond what you had expected? Did the firm encourage ideas that could make your company more money?

15. Can the firm tell you the last conference or seminar they attended in order to stay on the cutting edge of their industry? Can they name some of the benefits they found in attending conferences?

16. Does it feel like the web design fir's focus is mainly on site creation? Is the wed design aspect of the business merely a part of a larger business?

17. Will you own the own the code that is written for your site once it has launched? Will there be any licensing fees?

Make sure you are clear that you are the owner of your new web site. Make sure that you don't end up paying more to maintain and license your site than what you paid for it in the first place.

18. When you meet with the designer, are you also speaking with the same person that will be programming your site? Can the firm tell you roughly how many employees will be involved in your project? Can they name their designers, programmers, project managers, support members, SEO team members, etc.? Are they often the same people?

19. Are the firm's sites coded by hand, or do they use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs to do their coding? Do they do all of the programming by hand?

20. Does the firm employ designers, programmers, project managers, and marketing staff in-house? Are you going to be able to deal directly with their staff by simply making a phone call, or is it going to be a one time deal?

21. How many clients does the firm have? Are they launching a high number of web sites at regular intervals?

Asking these questions is an important process that helps ensure that you end up with a site that fits your budget, is marketable, and will give you the greatest return on your investment.