My first website
Choosing your first web designer
Congratulations, you have taken the first step towards the creation of your very first website. And we have probably ticked the first question on your shopping list for a supplier, “can you find the suppliers website on search engines?” First before we tell you how our web developers can help and the services we provide, let’s give you some tips that will help you choose the correct supplier for your project.
What to look for in a web designer
Like all industries, choosing the right supplier / web designer is key to the success of your project and ultimately your business, especially if you are intending to trade online only. The following are some important pointers, before you start talking to any supplier, make sure they tick the following important criteria:
Finding the right web designer
- We’ve ticked this box already,
can you find the suppliers website on the search engines? If you cannot find
their own website using their keywords, maybe you should be looking for another
supplier.
- Does their website have a UK
telephone number – Great, call them, make sure you can speak to someone who
will tell you about their web design services, you can tell a huge amount
about a supplier just by talking to them.
- At the bottom of all their
website pages can you see their company registration number? Make sure they
display their office address too. Legislation changed in 2009, you are no
longer allowed to run a website without publishing a telephone number, address and company
registration status / number.
- Can you see references /
testimonials on their website or even case studies for the larger projects,
what do their clients say about the services they provide? This is very
important, if they are doing a good job, their customers will be happy to sing
their praises.
- Are their plenty of good
websites examples on their website? Do you like their web designs; every web
designer has a different design style, if their style doesn’t match what you
are looking for it's likely they won’t produce a web design that will achieve the look you want.
- How big is your budget? There is
always going to be a web designer out there that will provide web development
services to meet your budget, but you have to be realistic, the size of the budget will
determine the scope of the website. These days a web designer will be looking
to charge between £400 - £800 per day. Pay less than this and I would ask some
serious questions, pay more than this and you need to be talking to a very
large web design company.
More than in any other industry, with web design, you get exactly what you pay for.
- Budget is important, make the
most of yours, whatever the scale of your budget, you should spend one third of
your budget on the web design, hosting and web content management system,
the other two thirds should be spent on website marketing. You can have the
fanciest looking website in the world, however, if you don’t do any website marketing,
you won’t get any visitors, no visitors, no income.
Again we say this a lot throughout our website, ask questions, know what you are getting for your money. Ask how the supplier will get your website on the first page of Google. How does one supplier sound compared to another?
- Never pay for the web development in one
go, stage the payment, typically (subject to the size of the web development project),
you should expect to pay a deposit, a second fee when the project is nearing
completion and a final fee when the developer completes what he has to do.
An important point to consider here, the website is not completed when you have all of your content in it. The website is finished when the web developer has built the website, tested it and it is ready for your content, if it takes you several months to pull your content together that will be down to you, so an important part of any development is getting the content together, in most small website projects the web content will be down to you.
- Never, never buy services from a
website where you cannot speak with someone from the company, before, you pass
over your hard earned cash. If you cannot speak to someone in the beginning,
you will have no chance later on if the website doesn’t go according to your
requirements.
- Finally, how will your web
designer support you and your website when he has completed your web development? Does
he have enough resources to support you and all of his other customers? This is
a key area for you, if the website doesn’t work in three months’ time how
quickly will he fix it? Your website will be generating you income and
supporting your own customers, you need to know your website will be supported
properly.
No developer will want to leave your website in a state of disrepair, but smaller developers will focus all of their attention on the website they are building at that point in time, make sure that you are convinced that support will be there when you need it. Oh and if they say that the support fee is included in the price make sure that is written down, if it is not in writing, that probably means you won’t be receiving any.
- Visit their offices, yes, visit
their offices, you are making an investment in your business, make sure your
web designer looks like he has the resources to deliver what you need.
- Finally use your common sense, if the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Always get a written estimate or quotation, if anything does go wrong, you will have a record of the services offered and the cost agreed for the services. Insist on an invoice before you pay and request a receipt for all your payments.
Follow those simple tips and you won’t go far wrong.
What web development services do we provide
Creative web design
Our web designers will take time to understand your requirements, to find out about your business and your potential customers, when they have a feel for this, they will discuss what you want your new website to look like. Once we have this information we will create a web design that represents you, your business and your products, a web design that will attract your customers and encourage them to buy your goods and services.
Web content management system
All of our web designs are delivered on MODx the number 1 web content management system available today. This easy to use content management system puts you in control of your website, you can edit your website, add new pages, add new sections, add content, links, video, all this functionality is under your control.
Your website name / address the Domain Name
Our web designers will work with you to help you choose a suitable name for your website, we will also check to see if the name is available to use. We take care of your domain name for you, we will attach it to your website for you. You will own your domain name, we will be managing it on your behalf.
Hosting
Every website needs hosting, our web designers will set your website up on our hosting. Our hosting is very secure, we partner with some of the UK’s largest hosting companies who host and manage our web servers 24 x 7, 365 days a year. Our web designers take care of all of this for you.
Credit cards, debit cards and PayPal payments
Each ecommerce web design includes a shopping cart that is integrated with our payment partners, SagePay. Your shopping cart will be able to accept payment from all major credit cards, debit cards and of course PayPal.
Supporting your website
Our isupport desk is available 24x7, 365 days a year, if you experience a problem you can log onto our website and raise a call at any time day or night. Once your support call is received, isupport will allocate your call to a technician that will fix any issues found.
Working to ensure your website doesn’t fail
Included in all of our hosting packages, we monitor your website continuously, tracking literally 100’s of different parameters to ensure that we know about any potential issue before it arises, prevention is our goal, stopping potential issues before you are even aware of them.
SEO search engine optimisation and website marketing
You probably found our website through the search engines, search engines are one of the major generators of website leads for any modern day business, if we can get our website on the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing then we can certainly put yours there too.
We cannot emphasise this point enough, “if your
website is not on the first page of Google, then you are highly unlikely to
receive any website visitors”, unless you are already a major brand, but then
you would not be looking at your first website, would you?
The global statistic for search engines and therefore the reason
why website marketing should be a top priority for your business, 97% of all people who
use search engines, buy from websites they find on the first page. Only 3% of
visitors look at the second page and beyond.
Another statistic that you probably know already,
in the UK, Google handles 87% of all online searches. If you want to find out
more about SEO search engine optimisation and website marketing, visit our
Website Marketing page.
Other web designer services available:
Copywriting - we can professionally write your copy for you.
Video - advice and production. Websites sell more with video content.
Email marketing.
Social networking advice.
Website integration – integrating your website with your other business
applications significantly improves productivity.
Next Step
Why not pop us an email letting us know what you are looking for, we would be
pleased to provide you with an indication of what it would cost to build your
new website. Click here for the form.
If you want to find out more about Fusionsoft, the type of ecommerce web designs we have recently completed, hear from our customers and see our products here are some useful links.
Click below to find out more more about:
Our portfolio - web design – ecommerce - SEO search engine optimisation - what our clients say?
