I recently posted a small article answering just a couple common questions & answers I encounter quite frequently “Why does my business need a website?“. This is in response to the feedback I have received from that article.

The advice given here is my own opinion; your mileage may vary.

You should always ask other companies around in your neighborhood who built their website. Chances are good that you’ll receive several different names or companies. Listen to the experience as it’s relayed to you – both the good and the bad. For heaven’s sake, please take notes! Make a check next to anyone that comes with high experience or high customer satisfaction so you can remember to call them yourself.

While you may want to go with someone out of state first, it will be difficult to review materials and meet face-to-face with your designer. It’s not completely out of the question to use someone out of state, I would just make the suggestion if you found a great designer close to you, locally, then I might use them first.

My personal experience does include web design for people out of state and also out of the country. That doesn’t mean it was easy, let me tell you first hand it wasn’t. It did make me better in verbal communication. Overall, I learned a great deal and yes, I would do it again without hesitation.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a large or small business, you’re about to spend real money for a website and you need to know it’s not going to be designed by a bunch of colorblind monkeys using a 10-year-old computer. Ask your potential web designers for samples of their most recent work then go check them out yourself. Here’s a quick list of things that I would suggest you look at:

1) Is the website easy to navigate? Can you find the menu easily or are the colors mashed together?

2) Does the website look the same in Internet Explorer as it does for Firefox or Safari? A good designer will adhere to the web standards.

3) Do you find the websites attractive? Are they unique?

Remember what you are looking at is a representation of their most recent work – if it looks bad now, you can bet your own site if done by them will look equally as bad.

Use a tool like Pingdom.com to measure the download speed of the websites and compare them against your competition. Take multiple samples of each site for a well rounded number. If the page load times exceed 20 seconds, ask the potential web designer why their pages load times are so long when the industry standard should be half the time (10 seconds)? Listen closely to the answer – you’ll know if they’re giving you an honest answer or if they’re handing you a shovel.

One more thought on page load times – beware of checking the times on websites that have rotating sliders or banners since they are continuously “refreshing” the browser, it will appear as though the page exceeds 30 seconds when It likely was finish loading all the elements in 10 seconds or less. Know the difference and again ask questions of the new potential designer. It’s also worth asking where each website is being hosted if the new designer also does the hosting. You’ll want to have a web host provider that can help ensure you site loads in less than 10 seconds. Greenhost Networks website hosting does have page load times in under 5 seconds (I’m not kidding) and here’s the secret how they do it: They don’t oversell their resources. This ensures speed, reliability, uptime and performance.

Have you ever remodeled part of your house or had to buy new tires for your car? Did you call just one person or did you make multiple phone calls finding the best contractor or price? Take time to call at least three (3) potential web designers that you have chosen and ask each for a job quote for your website. Once you have them, you’ll quickly see if they are treating you fairly & honestly by the price they quote and amount of detail they show in writing “what” you will receive for that price.

Please take the time to call each one back and ask questions about the quote they sent. If someone is $5,000 higher, ask them why. Get into the details and ensure you understand them. There have been times where a potential client who doesn’t even own a computer doesn’t fully understand the process of building a website and I’ll have to simply tell them to “sleep on it” and discuss it tomorrow again, or tell them they may not be ready to have a website yet until I can spend more time to educate them. Education is the foundation to having a successful website being design for you because it means you have established trust with your designer. Without the trust, you’ll likely not be as satisfied with the end result. You owe it to yourself, your business, and your potential web designer to establish trust in the beginning.

I hope you found this helpful to you. Choosing the right web developer for you is a very important step – don’t take it lightly and remember to ask lots of questions! If you don’t call Greenhost Networks for help, then please – call someone and get online today.

If you would like to see more personal experiences like this, please drop a comment below.

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