Creating your web site can be a tricky process. Choosing the best web design company for
your site is extremely important. Unless you run a web-based business, you probably do not
have web design experience within your company. Building your web site will take time and a
little homework!
To create a web site for your business, follow these 4 simple steps:
- Establish your goals
- Determine your budget
- Pick a web design company
- Pick a web hosting company
Establish Your Goals
Before you begin looking for company to help you design and build your web site,
take the time to understand the goals of your web site. This will be extremely
important to help set expectations with the web design company you choose.
In order to set your web site goals, ask yourself the following questions:
- Why do you want a web site?
- Are you selling something?
- Do you have a catalog of products that changes on a regular basis?
- Who is your target market?
- Do you already have a brand?
- What is your industry?
- Who are your competitors?
- Do they already have web sites? If so, what do they look like?
- If you're selling something, will you accept credit cards over the internet?
- How soon do you want your web site?
- What happens if you never create a web site for your business?
Take the time to answer each of the above questions and if you have time, write the
answers down on a sheet of paper. These are the same questions most web design companies
will ask you before they begin to create your site. If you have these questions answered
up front, you will have some criteria for choosing the right web design company.
For example, if you are a real estate agent, and want to publish listings on your web site,
you should seek a web design company that knows about the real estate business and has
created web pages for other real estate agents.
Determine Your Budget
How much do you want to spend on your web site. Know your spending constraints before you
begin negotiating with design companies. Whatever you do, do not tell a web design company
what your budget is!! Always get pricing based on your needs, not your budget.
Pick a Web Design Company
Your choice of a web design company is a very important step. Take your time to investigate
all of your options. Here are some important items to consider.
Design vs. Build
The process of creating a web site is similar to the process of building a new home.
Before you ask a construction company to start building, you first seek out an architect
who creates a blueprint of your house taking into account what you want (number of stories, square
footage, etc.).
This task is done during "Design" process in case of Website development .This can help you
accurately estimate the final price. Without the blueprint, you may end up paying a lot of
money for a site that does not fit your needs.
The task of constructing a building corresponds to building a website.
Depending upon the scope of your web site, you can either choose two different companies, one for
Design and the other for Building or you may go for a single company doing both of your jobs.
Building a web site is a highly technical process while designing a web site is a highly creative
process. Many advertising firms specialize in web site design which does not necessarily
require any web development skills whatsoever. However in case you choose a single company
for both Design and Building , has its own advantage . In this case, the company knows about the various
technical issues involved in developing and actually running a website on the internet.Their design ,
therefore also takes into account these factors as well and ultimately designs and develops a website
which both satisfies the customer's wishes and constraints as well as does not succumb to technical
limitations .
For eg. a tecnically experienced company will never put large images and animations , for that will make
the pages difficult to download during high traffic hours .
Evaluate Experience
Has the web design company created web sites similar to yours? Do they have relevant industry
experience? As with any services company, choosing someone that has relevant experience. If
you want to sell products through your web site and accept credit card payments, does the web
design company you are considering have experience doing just that?
Avoid getting influenced by Low Price Tag
When it comes to pricing one thing must be remembered that every quality work has its own cost
and it is only cheap work that can be cheap.
REMEMBER there is a heavy competition amongst Website development companies and so they may lower
their price to get the assignment.But this can compel the company to compromise on the quality
aspect in order to finish the project in time and in budget and still save something for themselves.
Typically, web design companies' price charts depends on various factors such as :
- Technology Used:
A good technology always takes time and effort to implement and hence the cost
of development rises up in comparison to other technologies.
A website developed using Java technology is costlier but not without certain
extra advantages.It has the capability to survive under heavy load conditions and
is very robust , flexible and maintainable due to its flexible and clearly
defined architecture.
A simple technology like php on the other hand though reduces the cost
of development but not without its limitations. A technology of pHP
can only be good for simple sites who have nominal visits per day. When faced
with heavy load conditions these sites may fail to respond effectively and
in some cases may even succumb to load and crash.
- Methodology of Development:
In order to reduce the cost of development, if a company uses FrontPage to develop an HTML
page it is bound to have a heavy with irrevelant codes,which can ultimately make the page
difficult to download.
BUT if a the company uses an experienced programmer to develop for eg. an HTML page manually
the page will be properly designed and highly optimised .But this will lead to a certain
increase in the development cost.
The bottom point is that Website companies are already under lot of pressure to give minimum price
in their charts.So never let yourself getting influenced by the low price tags . A low price may mean
low quality work. Always look into the quality aspect and the service standards of the company .
|
