What to look for in a web design team to work with for my business website?

Question

What to look for in a web design team to work with for my business website?

Answer 1

1) Integrity. No skill, education, or experience is a substitute for integrity. Everything else can be corrected, but if you have an integrity problem, then how can I know that you aren't lying about being reformed?



2) Experience with A) Linux, B) Apache, C) MySQL, D) PHP, and E) VMware.

2 a, b, c & d) Look at Netcraft. Most servers on the Internet are running open source software. After all, you can run



ASP.NET on:

Windows with IIS



or PHP on:

Windows with IIS, Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

Mac with Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

Linux with Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

FreeBSD with Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

OpenBSD with Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

NetBSD with Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

Solaris with Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

AIX with Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

HP-UX with Apache, Lighttpd, or Nginx

You get the idea...



E) Virtualization is the future. I'm tired of typing, so you'll just have to trust me on that.

Answer 2

My belief is that if you find a web design company online and they have a nice website and a decent portfolio it's likely that you will get a professional design and a good website. But the variables are things that everyone has written. How do they conduct their business? Do you want to form a long standing business relationship with them? Then there is pricing. You don't usually just want to take the lowest bidder because there is probably a reason that they are so low priced. But try to find a company you like that offers you the most at a fair price.



What I mean by that is... Can they offer expertise in all of the areas you need to make a truly succesful website? Things like SEO knowledge, an expert web copy writer (someone to write captivating results driven & SEO enriched content to fill your pages), photography, etc...



Also will they help you put together a launch plan? Social networking, set up a blog? Train you on analytics, etc...



There is much more to a website to make it successful than a URL and a good design.



So look for a company you trust, that can offer expertise on all the services you will need, and look for someone that is interested to help nurture your site all for a good value.



For an example of what i'm talking about check out this site: http://www.26twelvestudio.com/

Answer 3

Design-wise, you need to look through their portfolio and see if they can design for different audiences - it doesn't matter if they haven't done anything in your particular niche as long as they show they can cater to website users in different market sectors.



If they don't quote any testimonials, get in touch with their previous customers and find out how they handled the project.



Code-wise, they need to hand-code their sites - using tools such as Dreamweaver to auto-generate a site leads to sloppy, bloated markup that doesn't conform to current standards.



Try to find their site and the sites they've designed in Google, and look at the search results to see if they use spammy SEO tactics that provide a quick boost in the short term and then tail off, or build a solid foundation that grows over time - a good indication is whether the title and description of the pages are stuffed with keywords or written in natural language.



Talk to them. Let them know that you're looking for a site and see what they ask you about - if it seems like all they're trying to do is land the sale, avoid them. If they seem genuinely interested in the project and it's requirements, that's a good sign. Don't be put off if they ask you flat-out what your budget is, a good designer will find out how much the client has to spend and then work out how much they can deliver for that price.



Warning signs:



Very cheap prices - web design and development is a skilled field and if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. A web designer can quite easily charge upward of £40 per hour, so anyone charging very low rates is not going to give your project the time and attention it deserves.



Not interested in your business - not wanting to know about your business, your competitors and how to differentiate you is an indicator that all they're interested in is making money from you rather than helping you to succeed.



Offering "packages" - every design job is different. There are any number of factors which SHOULD affect the design process, ranging from the complexity of the design to the competitiveness of your market sector. Anyone who offers a "get your website for £xxx.xx" deal is not treating your project as unique.



At the end of the day, web design and development is like any other skilled service; you get what you pay for. Don't be tempted to cut corners and shave costs because it WILL affect your bottom line.

Answer 4

The key is to cover the skill sets that you're going to utilize. If you want an e-commerce website you'll need someone with programming experience. If you want to appeal to a younger demographic you'll want someone with animation or theatrical experience and depending on how you wish to go about designing it, software for designing with either Adobe Flash or with xml. If you want to have some community involvement you'll need someone with moderator skills as a webmaster. And of course you'll want to have the web designer for the basics that will give the template for styles, who must know css and xhtml like the back of their hand, and software so that the template can be implemented and software for all the others too.

Answer 5

You may want to consider some of the following questions when you are considering which firm to entrust your business image to.



Time in Business - are they fly by night or long lasting, proving that they know what they're doing?



Business Experience - do they understand what's needed to make a website succeed, and reach your customers?



Understanding you - how well do you feel that they understand you?



Quality of Work - what's the portfolio look like?



Excitement - do they care?



Customer Reviews – What are people saying?



For a more in depth breakdown of each of these points, have a look at the article source below...

Answer 6

Communication

That they understand where you are coming from

That they understand your objectives

They are not afraid to contradict what you want if they can explain how something different can help you

That they understand internet marketing!! Not a lot of web design firms understand this and if you don't have an internet marketer, they should know how to help you out



Most importantly:

That they are experts in web usability!!



I would suggest you educate yourself about web usability so you know something about it, then listen to them talk about and see if they know what they are talking about



My favorite author in web usability is Jakob Nielsen but it is heavy reading. A very good "light reading" on web usability is "Web Pages That Suck". It explains bad web design and gives examples and screenshots. Great easy reading and a great way to educate yourself

Answer 7

Clean HTML, using DIV and css with strong knowledge of SEO



If you have complex site requirements, then strong programming experience, object orientated programming with strong database skills



Also, people who listen and work with you, rather than guess your requirements, build quickly and get it all wrong.



Also, dont go too cheap, you get what you pay for, let me know your requirements and i will give you a quote range and what i would charge

Answer 8

HTML experience. make sure that they have it