Website Design

The Phoenixrealm take on website design. Things you should consider before employing a web site design company to design your website

The design of a website is both an intellectual and a physical experience. A website design should not only look pleasing to the eye, it should also facilitate smooth navigation and easy access to the needed information. Whether a website caters to the worldwide audience on the internet, or it enables the intranet of an enterprise, the sole purpose of its design is to provide the right information in as easy a manner as possible.
In the evolution of your site design, the first most consideration is the objective. Whenever you want a new site, you need to clearly define your objective, and this also helps you approach the right web site design company. A company that clearly understands your end objective will be in a better position to come up with exactly the design your website needs. The design and the scope of your website depends on:

What sort of content your website is going to publish and promote.
Who are going to be your users and what devices they are going to use to access your web site.
What browsers and operating systems they currently use and are expected to use in future.
Whether it is going to be a non-profit website or an e-commerce website.
What is your preferred platform: Unix, Linux, .NET, etc.
Whether you are going to need a database backend.
How often you plan to update/modify your web site content and design.
What is going to be your internet marketing SEO strategy and what SEO approach you are going to follow.
What is your deadline and how much budget you have.
What are your branding requirements.

These are very broad points and you may have your own unique considerations. What’s important is, make a list of all the things you need and will need, before approaching a web design company so that you have a clear perception of why you need a web site.
Once you have drawn your roadmap, you are ready to embark upon the great search for a web design company. Whether you are a small firm looking for a simple web site or a Fortune 500 company planning to develop a mega portal, finding the right web design and development company is a quintessential segment of your web design and development undertaking.
Employing a web design company is not as easy as it seems. At the outset it might seem uncomplicated because once you start looking for them, you discover there are so many of them. And they all seem to be designing great web sites all of a sudden!
Hiring a wrong, or let us say, mismatched web design company can have long-lasting repercussions and may even severely stunt your online business growth.
So how do you decide whom to employ? Among the hundreds of web design companies you may come across, how do you chose the right one for your web site? Fret not, because there is a way. Just do some research and try to find out the following things:

What sort of portfolios do they have?

A portfolio is the indication of the length and breadth of a web design company’s experience, and also knowledge. Some website design companies are Jacks of all trades, and some cater to a vertical market. The web design companies catering to a niche might be developing:

Content Management Systems
Multi-media Websites
E-commerce Websites
Social Media Networks
Websites for Educational Institutes and NGOs
Project Management Systems
Large Enterprise-level Websites
Websites for Small Businesses
Intranets and Extranets

Study the portfolio carefully. See what platforms they have worked on. Visit the websites mentioned in the portfolio and see what you like and what you don’t. Specifically check out the websites similar to the one you want for yourself and see how they’ve worked on those websites. Web design companies that have already worked on your kind of websites will take less time understanding your needs and through trial and error they may have learned many things that even you’re not aware of about the kind of website you need.
Be careful that merely knowing a few graphics software doesn’t make someone a web designer. Website design encompasses many components such as:

Information Architecture and Design
HTML Coding
Scripting and Coding in Programming Languages
CSS Designing

What sort of web site do they themselves have?

This is very important. Lousy web design companies are prone to have lousy websites of their own. Don’t get trapped in the argument of “we’re so busy we cannot design our own website”. Be observant of the following:

How is their navigation designed?
How easy it is to access important information?
Is their layout a hindrance or a complement?
Do the pages load fast?
Do they follow their design convention consistently throughout their website?
Are the color contrasts comforting or disturbing?
Is all the relevant contact information easily accessible?
Are their areas of expertise prominently listed?
Do they have a well-collated site map?
What is the overall organisation of content and layout?
Do they maintain a regularly updated blog?

All these questions throw lots of light on how much importance the web design company gives to their own customers. If they don’t respect their own customers, how are they going to respect yours?

What sort of referrals do they have?

Referrals are a good way of gauging a web design company’s performance over the years. Although different clients may have different views (it depends on their expectations and requirements), you can get a fair picture of the web design company’s abilities and limitations. Carefully study the referrals of those clients that had similar requirement as yours. Pay special heed to

How efficiently they handled the projects.
What is their turnaround time.
How they treat their past clients.
What the past clients say about their post-implementation phase.
What kind of pre-development research they conducted.
How well they incorporate the latest web designing technologies such as stylesheets, DOM scripting and AJAX.

Are they a group of freelancers or a company?

It matters and it doesn’t matter, depends on chance, but it is generally thought that freelance web designers are less organized than those who work with a company. It’s not a proven fact though, but this is something you may like to consider while hiring web designers. If it is a very large-scale project then it is advised you hire a company or an agency, but if it is a small project going for a company would be an over-kill. Freelance web designers are economical if you have a very small project, say 40-50 pages and a little bit of programming.

Finally, how much do they charge?

This can be really important if you are small business and if spending every extra pound matters. Sometimes it is advisable to hire a cheap web design company, get a basic-structured website ready, and keep on adding more functions as your business grows. But an expensive web design company doesn’t tantamount to great work. So consider the pricing if it really matters, otherwise, the points mentioned above are far more critical.

Conclusion

These points are not the ultimate gateway to a dream web design company, but they eliminate all possible chances of you ending up with an inefficient web design company. A successful project consists of myriad factors, and a good web design company is one of them, but an important, in fact very important factor. A good design gives you a head start and saves you future costs. A design that can easily accommodate future changes without costing big money is an ideal design and a company that aspires to deliver you such a design is the one you should look for.

Peterborough Website Design have further information regarding website design.

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Up to date web design information can be found on this website design blog that is maintained by the Doublespark team.