The internet is rife with horror stories about web service providers that seemingly don’t live up to a client’s expectations. Before you engage a web design agency to assist you with your web presence, there’s an implied assumption that you’ve already vetted them for all the things they can do for you. You’d be surprised how often that vetting is not carried out.
Understanding Value For Money
The value in working with any service provider is in the range of services and/or products that they can provide you with. Frequently though, the service that is offered and there servie that is understood to be offered are two very different things. Before you hire a web designer to work with you, you must ensure that you are absolutely clear on the value they will bring to your company.
To help you understand that value of having one comprehensive web design team working with you, here are some things that you should ask your web service agency prior to signing up for their web services:
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Breadth Of Services: Understanding the various types of services they offer is vital. Some agencies bill themselves as “full service” companies, but all they do is design and develop a site – they don't provide manage hosting, ongoing security & updates, web marketing, website upgrades or email hosting, for example. You need to sit down with them and discuss your requirements in more detail. Find out if the have the experience to look after across all the web related areas that you will need help with at some point in the coming year.
If you sign up for “full service”, then those are the types of things your website designer should provide. The point of working with a full service web company is that you don't have to have 5 separate providers for the above set of related services. It saves you time and money to have one experienced team to work with.
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Consulting: If you are new to the online world, you’ll likely not know what you really need, in terms of a web presence, software upgrades, online marketing etc. Make sure your web design team are a really knowledgeable team that can create solutions for you when you need them:
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Does your web team have all the skills that you will need in the coming 12 months?
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Does your provider offer web site consulting as part of their offering?
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Will they help you understand options, costs and alternative solutions?
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Will your website designer advice you on the best website hosting for your business?
Consulting is a vital part of web designing services; so you need to ensure you understand what that “consulting” entails before locking yourself in a contract wit ha new web design team.
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Marketing Assistance: Most premium web service agencies run business savvy operations and can provide their clients with invaluable support to help them sell and market their website and services. Again, sales is a really important business area, perhaps the most important, and you need to sit down with your web design agency and see what experience they have and how they would be able to help and advise you:
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Does your website designer understand your business and industry?
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Can they ensure the website they develop will help accurately project your brand & image?
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Do they have experience marketing and promoting small or large businesses like yours?
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Are they familiar with the latest Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques, Social Media Marketing (SMM) approaches and other web traffic enhancement and monitoring systems?
While a well-designed website is half the battle to online success, the other half is securing eyeballs see and visit the website. A good web designer should be an expert at making that happen too.
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Support: Learn everything you can about the support you should expect from your web designer. How will they deal with you? Who will you be speaking with?:
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Will they be available 9-6 Mon-Fri and website support and monitoring 24x7?
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Can you reach them via multiple channels – Text, Email, Phone, Online messaging?
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Do they have technical staff supporting you, or is the “support desk” just a messaging service?
Your website is only as good as those who are supporting it. Know what that “support” means before you sign up for it!
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Reliability: A well designed website with all the bells and whistles, and well written content, is of no use to your busienss if it is down more often than it is up. What website management and hosting experience does your website design team have? Have they managed big website before? What about website that are getting hacked from time to time?
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What kind of up-time will your website team provide?
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What resources, page load-time and website (traffic) bandwidth for the website are they promising you?
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Do they have reliable hardware and infrastructure supporting your site?
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Will the site be supported across all major internet browsers and devices (including mobile platforms)?
If you feel that you aren’t satisfied with the responses you get to these questions, it is likely that the service, like the provider, will be unreliable. Do not sign up with such a team. There is plenty of competition out there so that you can pick up the phone and speak to the next web design team and make sure they're signing the same song as you are.
Speak With The Website Companies First - Then Decide
Signing up for services with a web design crew before you understand what they can do for you, can be a costly mistake. Don't put the horse before the cart – get on the phone and speak to a few web design teams and wait until you have a good connection with one of them and then go visit them. Go through the above questions with them, plus your own questions, and see if they would be a good fit for your website and business.
Don’t be swayed by slick adverts or catchy jingles. Don’t lose focus of what it is that you are looking for from your web design team. Before you talk “contract”, discuss “benefits”, “value” and “capabilities”. If you would like to compare your current web team with an experienced, full service team like MYIT, call us on 01-6216866 for a free phone consultation.
