Cleethorpes Web Design
Put 'Web Design in Cleethorpes' in to google, and you will get many thousands of results - 28,500 when I tried it today. But if you were really looking for a web design agency in your local area, how could you possibly decide amongst them? Many do not publish their price lists, and few people have the time to ring around all the local marketing agencies for a quote for a site.
Here's a secret: The price you are quoted by one web design agency can almost always be beaten by another. It's like buying car insurance. If you get a quote from a second company and ring back the first, nine times out of ten they will offer you a better deal. What you need to do is find out how good your web designer, or web design company is, and how reliable they are with looking after your sites. Price is usually a secondary issue, but don't be afraid to get alternative quotes and haggle. It's worth finding out who their nearest competitors are and use this as extra bargaining to drive the price down.
I've compiled a checklist of the things you should consider when choosing who is going to be making your website (not necessarily in order of importance:
- Is the web design company technically able to fulfil your requirements
- Can they deliver on time and within agreed budgets
- What level of after sales service and technical support are offered
- How much does it cost to build, also find out 'hidden extras' like annual hosting fees, domain registration costs, technical support, costs for minor updates and alterations, and also transfer admin costs if you want to give the business to another company - I've seen ludicrous quotes of over £100 to transfer ownership of a .co.uk website when it only requires the site copying to a CD and channg the IPS tag of the domain name.
- What other benefits can the web designer offer - eg. Search Engine Optimisation. - find out what exactly what these things cost and make sure that is written in to the contract
- Oh yes, most importantly, get a legally valid contract - many disputes over copyright ownership and hosting arrangements can be avoided by having a contract written up. Any good web design agency will already have template client contracts that they can modify slightly to fit your arrangements. You should not have to pay your own solicitor to draw contracts up, however it's vital to get an expert opinion on the contract before you sign anything.
Of course, all web designers will say that they are the best value for money - usually they say things like "we're not the cheapest, but you get what you pay for" or "You can get a 17 year iold working from his bedroom to knock something up in a couple of days and charge you £200 but it will look awful", or my favourate excuse "you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". Don't be persuaded by these arguments. A simple website can be just as easily (and much more cheaply) built by a freelance website designer as it can by a large web design company- with the added benefit that the freelancer will not try to upsell other more expensive and possibly pointless services like 'regular newsletters', 'Content management systems' and 'regular security audits'.
Probably one of the best ways to find out whether a web designer is worth taking on is by getting the opinions on previous clients. Previous clients are much more likely to point out any problems with the company than current ones. If a client has moved to another web design agency, they will be able to tell you what issues they had with the company, if any, or whether the move was for other reasons, eg taking the work in-house or cuts in the marketing budget.
If you are using a limited company, its a good idea to check their credit rating. I've dealt with clients who's previous web design agency went out of business and it took a very long time to be able to transfer their website across to the client's control. A good, well run web design agency will have healthy balence sheets. A badly run, or incompetant agency will show bad credit ratings. Look out for County Court Judgements (CCJ's) as these are a red flag that someone has had to take them to court for not paying their bills, or for reclaiming money for work that was not done.
Finally, there is no substitute for word of mouth. If the company has been trading locally for a couple of years, then they will probably have built up a reputation - good or bad. Get a wide range of opinions if possible.