No matter how great your business plan, success can still allude you if your website has very unclear and confusing content, and/or you put up with poor website hosting (e.g. slow loading pages or downtime). When thinking about which website development company to select, have some fun and play ‘web design bingo’ – we suggest a ‘full card’ to be web design outfits that note these listed points when discussing your proposed new site:-
- YOUR strategy – talking in detail in terms of what your intentions are – what’s the website development firm’s feelings about your idea ?
- importance of usability – so your audience can carry out things easily on the site
- issues of accessibility – so your website can be physically accessed by all, with content clearly understood by the intended target market
- search engine optimisation – giving your site good search engine rankings
- CMS (content mangement systems) – allowing you to edit the info on the site by oneself at any given time
- security – safety of private data, with at least daily backups of data.
- hosting – will the web development firm host your website? If so, what about their servers? Do they use shared servers with 100s of other websites on the very same server, or do they have their own servers?
- tech support and after-sales – will they be around to serve your business once the site goes live? How much is support? Do they offer site updates?
A decent design team will enlighten you on the preceding matters, and how they deal with them.
How to discover a website design firm? It’s advisable to search for one in your location, allowing you to visit them and get some peace of mind that they are also a real company with a strong team to do the job well. On Google, type in a search term like “website development” plus your location; for example : website design nottingham. This will give you a listing of web development companies in your locality.