ViolanteRand221
I always make an effort to give customers some good educational advice in choosing a company the is offering %anchor1% because it is a more intricate decision when compared with you may think and also does demand a lof of assumed
I suggest making a list so that you do not forget anything that you need to look into when researching for this process. I would always recommend to people that the first thing to look at would be portfolio's of different web companies. This gives a good idea of what type of standard they are designing to. The other thing that I think is equally important is the level of customer service and I think any company with a good reputation can give references for a lot of different people that have used their service
How long the project will be in duration is definitely a good point to bring up with the design organisation and whether all the work is their own or templates are being used. Everyone would like their own bespoke website made and sometimes there are companies that are offering very cheap websites but these are being made with web templates and in actual fact they are just adapted for your business.
Another thing to look at is also whether the company takes care of any search engine optimization for the website. This will only be altering the code for Google and probably involve a submission to Google. However to really dominate the search engines this will generally be a monthly fee. However the level of competition will vary from industry to industry so it really does depend which niche you are working in to be honest.
Keyword research is also very important and this may be something that you would pay an additional fee for, but could end up money very well spent. It is of course extremely important to know what your customers are looking for on the internet and also should give you a bit of a head-start over the competition. I would always also check what is the cost of hosting the website so you are aware of this and how much the renewal is likely to be in years time. Usually the company that you have chosen for the design will be able to facilitate this, or alternatively you can search for other companies that provide this service
It is important that you choose a good reliable company for this so that your website is not losing any uptime on the internet. I would rather pay a little bit more money for peace of mind that my site never goes offline rather than save a few pennies and end up with problems. For me telephone support is essential with hosting and I would not be happy with email support for such a service. It really is the type of service where you need someone on the other end of the phone as sometimes emergencies do happen!.
I normally would only use the search engines to find a company in the field of web design. This is mainly because a company that are placed on the first page of google gives a good indication of their knowledge with SEO and that is a must for your business to work online.
