As more and more people start to turn to the internet for products and services, it is becoming more imperative to have a well-built website for your business. According to Statista, in 2016, there were 209.6 million online shoppers in the U.S. alone. Currently, in 2021, Statista projects there to be 230.5 million U.S. online shoppers by the end of the year.
With internet traffic continuing to grow year after year, especially after the pandemic, it makes sense to target your online segments. How do you choose a web design company that will build you a premium website to help better reach your online customers?
Table of Contents
- Know the Benefits of a Web Design Company
- What to Look for in a Web Design Company
- Questions to Ask Website Design Companies
- What Web Design Companies Need from You
- Comparing Web Design Company Prices
- Finding the Best Web Design Company for Your Business
Know the Benefits of a Web Design Company
Before you start choosing a web design company, you need to be aware of how they are supposed to benefit you. A website developer/designer should be able to build you a custom, premium website with minimal involvement needed from you.
You hire a web designer to build and maintain your website for you. That way, you can focus on doing what you do best, running your business.
What to Look for in a Web Design Company
Not all web design companies are created equal. If they do not provide the benefits listed above, move on to the next. However, if they do, here is how you distinguish the good from the best.
1. Web Design Company Who Listens to Your Ideas
Although it is their job to build the site for you, the best website designers will take the time to listen to your ideas. After all, you are the one who knows the most about your business and industry.
If you know how you want your website to look, your web designer should help improve upon those ideas. They should not dismiss them.
2. Web Design Company with Their Own Ideas
Whether you have any ideas or not, the website designer you choose should have their own to bring an outside, professional opinion to the table. As professionals, they should have ideas on how to build a website that not only exemplifies your business but also helps to increase conversions.
3. Web Design Company that Aims Grow Your Business
Your website designer should want to help your business grow. With conversions in mind, they should aim to help you find and keep customers with your premium site. Meaning they should not just have high levels of traffic in mind, but also high levels of leads from that traffic as well.
They should have a good grasp of:
- Calls to action
- Color psychology
- Design layout
- Usage patterns
Essentially, they should be aware of everything a website needs to make people want to either buy, subscribe, or read on.
4. Web Design Company that Is Continuously Improving
The digital world is continuously changing and updating as new trends come about. Your web design company should be changing too.
A good web design company will work to stay relevant and with the times. They will also make sure your site is always well maintained and up to date in every aspect.
5. Web Design Company That Uses Responsive Web Design
Nowadays, people mostly browse websites on their phones or tablets rather than on desktops, or even laptops. Due to this, it is imperative that your website is easily navigational on all devices.
The website designer you choose should use a responsive web design that easily adapts to whatever the customer is using as a device. That way, the customer’s experience is always pleasant. Nothing causes you to lose customers quicker than a bad mobile design.
6. Web Design Company with Viable References
You have no idea how often we come across web design companies who claim to work with big brands but have no links to their sites to show what they did.
If you ask the website design company to provide you with links to their past work and they can’t provide them, they are probably lying about their capabilities. More than likely, they do not have enough experience to create a quality website if they feel the need to mislead you into believing they have worked with bigger brands that in fact, they haven’t worked with.
Asking for reference links is also an easy way to check out whether or not you like the quality of their work. You get to see different things they can do to give you ideas about how you want your site designed.
If all their websites seem to have the same design and style, this may be a red flag. You want someone capable of designing custom and unique websites so that your site stands out from the crowd.
7. Web Design Company with a Good Website
A good indication of the web designer’s skills and capabilities is their own website. Is it easy to navigate? Is the design attractive? Does it have calls to action to get you to buy their service?
Essentially, what you are looking for here is whether or not you trust and want to buy from their site. If you do, that means they will likely be able to build you a trustworthy site that your potential clients will want to buy from too.
Do not be too off-put if the design style of the site does not match your desired aesthetic. A good website designer will be able to create any style of website, even one that matches your unique tastes.
8. Web Design Company that You Can Call
A good website developer will more than happily answer any of your questions over a simple phone call. While on the phone with them, they should:
- Answer your questions without much difficulty
- Be friendly and easy to talk to
- Interested in your business and not just trying to hard-sell you
You will be working with this company for weeks, if not months. Therefore, they must be easy to communicate with and approachable when it comes to questions.
Questions to Ask Website Design Companies
Once you have narrowed down your search to companies you believe meet your criteria, it is important to ask them a few questions before giving them any money.
1. What Are the Steps Involved in Making My Website?
A web designer who has experience in the field should be able to tell you every step of their design/development process quickly and easily. By doing so, they should also give you a relative idea of how much involvement is needed from you.
If you only have basic information for your website, this should not be a problem because the best web designers will be able to build quality, engaging content around whatever you give them. However, they should also be open to changes at any point in time that you decide you want them.
2. How Do I Make Changes and Updates After My Site Is Built?
The best website developers/designer will do all the changes and updates for you.
Most designers will charge you extra for updates, or make you sign up for a separate maintenance plan. The best website design companies though, will include changes into their already affordable monthly plan so that it is part of the web development process, not an extra thing you have to pay for.
However, if you are someone who likes to have the added work, they should also be able to explain to you how to go about making changes to your website yourself.
3. How Important Is User Experience to the Building of My Site?
The answer to this question is important. A site should not just look good. It should perform well too.
To keep potential clients on your website and to keep loyal clients coming back, the site needs to be easy to use. If it is not, you will see your conversions decrease.
The designer should build your site with user experience as one of their main priorities. If not, you need to find a different website creator.
4. Are There Any Extra Fees I Should Be Aware Of?
A good website designer will be honest with you about their pricing and fees. Asking them straight up about extra fees is important in the beginning. You don’t want to get halfway through the process and get nailed with expensive fees because you wanted to change an aspect of your design.
5. How Will You Help to Promote My Website?
Building an excellent website is a lot of work, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t more to do to help the site thrive. Most website development companies offer SEO services separately, but a good website developer should include different SEO techniques into their website development by default to ensure your website takes off.
For example, a good level of promotion would involve:
- Link building
- Local business listing submissions
- Local directory citations
They should also be able to tell you how their custom coding will help you rank better on Google all on its own. A good, custom-coded site will always perform better than one built from a template and your designer should be aware of this.
What Web Design Companies Need from You
The best website design companies will be able to work with very minimal information from you to build an informative, well-rounded site. However, the more you give them, the more likely your website will showcase your business better.
1. Basic Company Information for Your Website
To start, they are going to need to know the basics about your company such as:
- Business name
- Contact information for inquiries
- Hours of operation
- List of services
If you have other things like logos and pictures, you can give that to them as well.
2. An Idea of Your Web Design Tastes
When you describe your company to them, they may ask if you have any design preferences. Good website designers won’t need any to do their job but will also gladly incorporate your ideas into the design if you have them.
Normally though, they will ask basic questions about the tone you want your site developed in. Such as a serious site for lawyers or a fun exciting site for selfie museums.
3. Content for Your Website
Website designers will need basic content from you. However, a great website designer will be able to work with basic information. They should be able to create more content based on your niche and website goals if you do not have very much to give.
However, you should also be able to write your content if you so desire and have it incorporated without any issues.
Content includes things such as:
- A short pitch of what your business is about that goes on the home page
- Blog posts
- The content for each page (about info, services explained)
Comparing Web Design Company Prices
When it comes to building a website for your business, you need to take into consideration how much it is going to cost you. Web design agencies are going to cost a lot more than website builders but are going to result in a more professional-looking site. However, there is an option that is the best of both ends of the website building market.
1. Website Agency Prices
Website agencies usually charge at a going rate of $75 per hour. Depending on the difficulty of your design, your website could cost anywhere between $5,000 to $10,000. This average cost includes:
- Set up
- Design
- Building
- Content creation
- Maintenance
- Training client
However, this price range is for agencies that are better suited for larger companies.
2. Website Builder Prices
Many smaller companies tend to turn to website builders that can be free or have smaller monthly prices. However, they then have to build the websites themselves.
The builders severely limit your creativity, which results in your website looking like hundreds of others and not performing well.
3. Atavion Prices
There is an option in between these prices though. Atavion is a website development company that charges on a per-month basis instead of by the hour. We offer three different website development plans to best suit anyone’s needs.
- Single-page website for $149/month
- Multiple page website for $199/month
- E-commerce website for $299/month
All website packages are completely free until you are ready to launch your website!
Finding the Best Web Design Company for Your Business
Many people say you need to pay a lot of money to get a good website, but this is not true. At Atavion, we are the best of both ends of the website building market. We build premium websites for you at affordable prices.
How are we capable of doing this? Simple, we developed a proprietary solution that allows us to automate the website development process. Thus, allowing us to custom make premium websites quicker, and at more affordable costs. Thanks to our new solution, both small and big businesses can have access to premium websites now.
Choosing Atavion for Your Web Development Needs
When you work with Atavion, you are getting agency-level quality websites at prices you can afford from a friendly, and easy to work with team. Our process is simple for you because that is how it should be.
You choose from one of our three affordable website development monthly plans and then start the sign-up process with us where we ask for some basic business information from you.
Don’t have a lot to give? No problem! We do everything for you including:
- Coming up with a design for you
- Helping to choose your domain name
- Providing content for your website
- Providing fast hosting
We are always open and ready to work with you every step of the way if you have any questions or changes that you desire. If you don’t have any questions or changes you can just sit back and relax while we take care of everything for you!
The Website Building Process
Once you have chosen a monthly plan and given us all the information you want to give, we go to work creating a concept website design for you to approve. Every step of this process is free until you are happy with the concept design and approve to move forward. If at any time you want to unsubscribe, you can!
It will take anywhere between one to two weeks to build and launch your brand new, mobile-friendly site with no hidden fees waiting for you.
Launching Your Website
Once your website is launched, we continue to take care of all the maintenance and updates that it requires to keep your business thriving. From updating the text to adding new pages, we have you covered.
At any point through the process that you have questions, feel free to contact us and we will be happy to help.
The success of your business is important to us. Therefore, we will do whatever it takes to keep your website looking its absolute best while you focus your time on keeping your business thriving.
Comparing web design company prices requres knowledge of some nuances. The price of web design and web development depends on many factors.
If a web design agency presents you with other ideas as well and give your opinion priority then you are on the right track.
It’s been my experience that most web designers and programmers will teach how to make general changes to the site after it’s been created. For example, changes in content, maybe even adding pages using a template already created, changing page titles, etc.
However, there will always be more technical things to be done, so finding a developer who can take care of issue when they arise (and they will!) is a good idea.
Thanks for defining the differences between web designers, web programmers. People think these are interchangeable terms for the same job and as you’ve so clearly shown, they are not.
When it comes to finding a reputable web design and development company, you should always look for one that is experienced, reliable, and affordable. Additionally, make sure to ask the company what their capabilities are before hiring them. https://www.alakmalak.com/?utm_source=yj-oct&utm_medium=atavion&utm_campaign=seo-qu has a professional team of design and developers who has helped me multiple times over the years to build a WordPress website and can do the same for you.