How to choose a good Web Design Company
# Check Out Their Site
If the company you are looking at has a nice site, then it’s fairly obvious that they know what they are doing. However, like mentioned earlier, do not judge their site as the quality of the site that you will recieve. If their site is lousy, it’s better to just pass on them.# Check Out Their Price.
Price isn’t necessarily the most important factor depending on the kind of site you’re wanting to have built. If the site will make you money, as long as you are able to get a site without losing money in the longrun, don’t worry about it that much. Many businesses pay really cheap designers to make their site and loses thousands of dollars in sales every month, just because they were cheap in the beginning. Customers can smell someone being cheap. Rather than think about how much they cost, think about the return on investment.# Check Out Their Portfolio
Judge the quality of the portfolio itself (this may fall under rule 1), then judge the quality of the portfolio entries. If they do not give a website address for any of the portfolio samples, then it is best to skip this designer. If they do not give a website address for a portfolio, it typically means that they have the talent to make a website but they lack the customer interaction. If they are not good at customer interaction, then they are worthless. Obviously, if the portfolio entries suck, then you know what you’ll get, move on.# Do They Design With Web Standards And Accessibility?
Typically, you will not need to ask them this question, just examining their portfolio entries should answer this question. Run the address of the portfolio entry through the HTML Validator and CSS Validator and see if the site returns errors. If they do, then they do not take web standards seriously, skip them. To test for accessibility, turn off stylesheets and images in your browser and then try to browse their site, if it’s more difficult than it should be, skip them.# Talk To Them
If they do not provide any method of contact, skip them. If they do provide a phone number or IM address, try to talk to them personally. Like mentioned earlier, the personality of the designer is the most important because you can immediately tell wether or not they care about you as a customer or think of you as “another”. Rule of thumb, NEVER pay someone to work for you when you do not like them (that should be obvious, but it’s not for some people). If they are nice and meet the criteria above, give them a try.
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