With the web design industry being completely unregulated choosing the correct Web Design Company can be a difficult decision. With literally 100's of web design companies and freelancers out there, it’s difficult to know just who to believe when it comes to grandiose comments and quoted successes such as 'award winning' design, and how to filter out the professionals from the "have a go" amateurs.
If you want to go down the DIY website route that's fine, rent yourself some server space for £50 a year or less and install a FREE open source content management system such as Wordpress or Joomla and tweak it yourself, install a nice theme and you have working website, These free packages are great for blogs, small one man bands and personal websites but if you need a company website that will stand out from the crowd then you need to employ a web designer.
Unfortunately there are a growing number of web design agencies who are simply installing these free packages and passing them off as their own work, some do it openly which reflects in their fees, you didn't expect a bespoke website for £99 - £199 did you? Others are charging unsuspecting clients between £500 - £2000 and claiming the work is bespoke.. These are not web designers; these are unskilled amateurs who have learnt to use a piece of software.
If you have fallen for this in the past you will have noticed that you had no say in the design and when asking for unique feature you would have been told that it wasn't possible as a plugin doesn't exist. If you have only paid a couple of hundred pound you haven't lost much but will have gained some experience and probably won't fall for it again
It's important when choosing a web design company that ask whether they use software, site builders of whether your site will be bespoke. Look at their own site; view the source (CTRL+U) and look for telltale signs (wp-includes in url's for example) If they didn't even build their own site how professional are they?
These are the companies who have downloaded or had a template made by a third party and all their website site look exactly the same in different colours, some large companies (Yell for example) do this but many smaller, local web design companies also employ this business model.. These type of companies usually contact you and not the other way around which is why they are often referred to as telesales web agencies, they'll offer what sounds like a great deal for a professional website. What you'll get is a website thrown together by unskilled staff which is far from professional and does very poorly on the search engines.
Does their own website look the same as every website in their portfolio or do you get the feeling you have seen their website somewhere before? Their website is probably a template itself. I recently came across 2 totally independent web design companies in my own town using the same template for their company websites, bad for them ( I actually laughed), great for someone like me.
It's important when choosing a web design company that you ask whether they use templates or not and make sure you ask about unique features
The word bespoke is misused a lot in the web design industry, a bespoke site has had its code written from scratch by a professional coder, your site can have unique features and can function exactly how you want it to function.
A bespoke web designer will not tell you something can't be done, he/she will find a way to do it. If you are serious about your online business then you must have a bespoke web site create to stand out from the crowd.
.jpg)
As professional coders we are capable of working with a full range of design and coding technologies making us the ideal choice for local businesses, charities, local authorities, schools and large national companies.
