Living in San Francisco in the 1990’s was like participating in a second gold rush. Penny stocks were making folks with web related jobs millionaires, and investment capital flowed like water through Evian bottles. The city exploded with people looking for quick and easy internet gold. The industry quickly became saturated with skilled and novice web developers. In the last 15 years, web designers are now finding competition with their next door neighbors and abroad. As a result, finding a good web design company can be a daunting task, and good references becomes precious commodities not only for the web company but for the prospective client trying to sort out the good from the bad.
Website Design does not require a professional degree nor certification in order to claim the title. Although programmers need training, they can be self-taught. With so much free and out-of-the-box software available online, anyone with a rudimentary understanding of web development can build a website.
The field of website design is appealing because it combines creativity with technology and can be done from home. As a result the industry is saturated and determining a good website designer from bad can be very difficult. Especially since the criteria of a good designer is not clear. Everyone knows what to expect from their plumber if their sink is leaking, but it is not so apparent when hiring a web designer. Is this “good” code or “bad”? Is this professional design?
I found this great guide by Network Solution (download PDF) called How to Choose the Right Designer.
Network Solutions Guideline makes these three points:
- The company should supply references/samples of work and contact information (including address)
- They need to provide a schedule with deadline. (We also recommend documentation such as Project Proposal, and Wire Frames as well as the Schedule of Deliverables)
- Your website should be self-maintainable and if it is not, the company should provide a maintenance service agreement and costs.
Technical Skills, Graphic Design, Domain Name Security as well as Content Writing, and Internet Marketing are all essential parts of a good website. Most web designers are a Jack-of-All trades, and may be proficient in all these areas. If you find an individual that you are confident covers these basics well and is affordable, he/she is a keeper . Working as a one-man show helps to keep overhead down and allows their services to remain affordable for small business owners. Also, many of these individuals affiliate themselves with bigger companies and can rely on their professional tools and services. Something important to consider: a good individual web designer must be well-organized. It is difficult to maintain day-to-day correspondence, answer client questions, network for his own business, pursue sales, do all the development and production work himself and still stay abreast with the latest internet technologies.
Most often, web development companies hire in-house staff to divide the duties and allow individuals to focus their energy on developing specific skills (i.e. the Application Engineer is responsible for the programming, the Account Representative manages projects, etc) and outsources certain aspects of the project when required (additional programming staff, etc.)
Aside from the requirements itemized in the Network Solutions guide, there are a few things you can do to “test” the qualifications and skills the web development company offers. If SEO is on their list of services, check their ranking. We are accustomed to competition but when your competition lists competing services without the qualifications, it misleads the prospective client. I have found individuals lecturing at network meetings on SEO when their own websites rank poorly. Mind you, ranking under “search engine optimization” has got to be the most competitive key word out there, but there are bench marks and reasonable expectations to go by. If you search “Web design” you will get a result of over 300 million hits, so narrow the search using boolean search or Google search terms. For example if you live in Pennsylvania you can do a local search with the search query:
“website designers” in Allentown, PA (using the quotes to find exact match)
Of the 2,000 results, a good designer that advertises SEO as one of their services should be found in the first three pages and preferably on the first page.
I also notice that web design companies advertise Pay-Per-Click Services but do not provide references or an overview of their last PPC campaign. A lot of responsibility comes with this service. The SEO consultant must get the best tangible results with their clients investment. One of my clients is in the competitive field of finance. At $10 per click, my client’s competition has a $65,000 per month budget to get successful ranking for just one key word “debt reduction”.
A small PPC campaign may be a $100/month budget. With this, the website design company cannot make any time investment since the 10% of the budget is the fee. $10 of services does not go far but they can still advertise providing PPC Ad services Most often web design companies with a staff of 2 – 12 divide the time of one of the employees when SEO or PPC is required.
Technology is “invisible” to most users and creative design and marketing is arguably subjective, but there is real skill and study that goes into building a comprehensive web solution: Advertising companies require a degree or minimum of 5 professional years of experience from their staff. Web Design Companies and Website Designers should hold to the same standards of excellence.