You thought it all over a hundred times before and you have finally decided to put your business on the Web (or to replace that embarrassment of a website that was actually turning heads when it was first made during the nineties). Now you probably think it will be enough to find the right web design company and they will take care of everything. It should be easy for you... Well, think twice! There are thousands of web design companies in the world and choosing the right one isn't easy especially when you don't know where to look and how to determine what is the right choice for your needs. In this article I will help you do your homework before you end up being disappointed either with a lousy website you'll get or with spending way more than you initially expected. First of all, you have to do some research (Google, Yahoo, MSN...) typing keywords that you would use if you wanted to find services or information related to your own business. This way you will be one step closer to getting to know your competition. Since many of the results will be useless and not necessarily related to your business, the next step is filtering the results in order to make a selection of websites that are similar to your own website needs. When you've made your final selection sort the remaining websites by: a) great visual appearance and b) good functionality (these two characteristics are the two most important defining factors of any web site). Go through these two categories and make notes about what you liked at every site regarding design: logo design, nice images, flash animation, useful navigation, attractive color scheme, etc. and also find out and note what your competition put on their website: what kind of information they have included, how do they make their visitors stay and research further, what is the structure of the sites and how the content is organized. Finally, make an exhaustive list of things you want to put on your future web site. Now that you have collected all the information you needed you will see that you are much more certain about what you want and how do you want it to be done. Now you should collect all the material that you need for your website: articles, images, legal stuff, related texts, reviews, technical information... It is important that you collect as much material as you can because that process will get you a much clearer picture of requirements of your business than you had in the very start and in the end you will know exactly what you need and what you don't need on your website. Next step is narrowing down your list of web sites with good design (three to four examples) and finding out which web design firms created those websites. If you can find out who did it, take a tour through their site: look at their portfolio, learn about their pricing and collect their contact information. Almost every decent web design firm will have an RFQ form where they will ask you questions about your web site needs, your budget, colors you would like to use, links of a few web sites that are similar to what you need and details for each site (e.g. "has the features I need but design is lousy") and if you remember what I said earlier in this article you see that these are all questions you already know the answers for. :-) This way, not only that you will speed up your designing process by telling your web designer exactly what you want and having all the material ready, but you will also know exactly what is good and what you want to be changed when you see first design mockup from a designer. Finally, what is most important, you will avoid hiring a firm that's not fit to do it right or within your budget.

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Website Acquired: www.pear-logo-design.com

Date Written: 8. December 2005. This article is allowed for reproduction as long as the links and information about the author are kept intact.

© 2006 Pear Logo Design