How to find a good web designer or eCommerce developer

- and what to avoid when choosing an e-business supplier for web site design or eCommerce development on the Wild West Web-

While there our countless reputable suppliers of e-business services out there, the evergrowing increase in less trustworthy or competent web design agencies has contributed to the coining of the phrase, the “Wild West Web”.

Fear of being mislead, mis-sold or worse causes anxiety for many small companies when choosing an e-business solutions provider, and quite a number of our existing web services clients have previously been affected in one way or another by their experiences with unscrupulous or unprofessional website designers. With this in mind, we have provided below some information on what can go wrong and how to avoid it when shopping for e-business products.

Potential pitfall scenarios to avoid when choosing a website designer or eCommerce supplier:

1. A graphic designer is chosen to do a web designer/web developer's job:
   One common consequence of this is that the website is subsequently poorly coded or absolutely invisible to major search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN, due to excessive use of Flash or other graphics. Another common outcome is that you start off with a wonderful looking Photoshop webpage template, but that the web designer isn't a competent enough html coder to transform webpage template into high quality, efficient, and search engine-conscious, marketable code once he exports it to HTML. For larger online projects, where web developers and graphic designers work alongside one another it is also best to check, if possible, how long they have worked together and how adept they are at collaborating.
   
   
   
   
2. e-Business Vendor lacks sufficient skills to complete the web design project:
   This could mean that the web project is significantly delayed, that the vendor ultimately has to concede defeat and you need to find another web design company. It could even mean that the web site needs re-coding from scratch.
   
   
3. Website designer disappears with your money before even doing any work:
   For smaller web projects there are many web designers who will take money only on completion. Other than that, a 30 percent deposit with 70 percent on completion or something around there is reasonable. For larger web design projects and eCommerce sites, terms and conditions vary greatly across the industry. For such projects your supplier should be clear and transparent about what payments are due at which stages or events during the project and upon what terms each staged payment is to be made for your website.
   
   
4. Web design company disappears immediately after completion of your web site
   offering no online support or comeback for anything that goes wrong during the early stages of the product life-cycle. In order to avoid this, always make sure you enquire what sort of technical support and web site aftercare is available, and how the product will be checked and signed-off for when it goes live.
   
   
5. Web designer creates a web site for you that advertises his own web site
   and online services even more vigorously than your own e-business. Hard to believe, but we have seen a few instances of this, and they can actually be quite easy to conceal from non-technical customers.
   
   
   
   
6. Off-the-Shelf eCommerce subscription service fails to generate sales
   Many of these packages (including BT Tradespace) allow little or no scope for control over the major code elements of your site which it is neccessary to be able to manipulate in order to optimise it properly for search engines. A cheap ecommerce subscription service which initially appears to be a good deal, may ultimately bring little or no return on investment. The eventuality might even be that you need to begin your ecommerce strategy all over again, or that you are confined wholly to advertising your site and generating traffic through PPC.
   
   
7. eCommerce site or business directory is designed without scope or planning for search engine optimisation
   This is quite a common problem and we see examples of it on new customer's websites several times a week. eCommerce web sites use scripts such as ASP, PHP and Perl to connect to backend databases, and also to generate the HTML which is output. This offers numerous opportunities for using scripts to manage content. However, it also frequently presents a serious problem for SEO experts when the developer unwittingly opts for using a single ASP, PHP or Perl script to generate multiple major pages on the site. The drawback of this is that none of these pages can subsequently be optimised individually for search engines. If you fall prey to this scenario, then your site may need re-engineering in order for you to see any return on your investment.

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Become Web Savvy: How to choose a web designer or e-business supplier without any technical knowhow.

Now we have outlined some of the things that can go wrong, here are a few things you can do to avoid such scenarios:

1. Approach a selection of web services agencies and compare the promises they make as well as the prices for the final product, including the implementation of your web site. Where possible ask for evidence to back up any claims they make.
   
   
2. Before committing to a particular web designer, check how well they communicate. If you aren't getting sufficient feedback or are waiting unreasonable times for responses to emails and phone calls before you have paid any money, then the chances are that this situation will persist after money has exchanged hands.
   
   
3. Look for testimonials and, if you can't find any, ask for them.
   
   
4. Ask to see any previous web sites they have built.
   
   
5. Look for spelling mistakes on the web designer's own web site or literature. It is amazing how many otherwise beautiful sites out there are littered with spelling errors; which do anything but instill customer confidence in the product or service they advertise. Competent spelling and presentation could make or break your prospective site even more so than its use of impressive graphics or other common selling points that web designers use to entice you.
   
   
6. Look for web standards logos such as W3C or Bobby. These often provide a fair indication of a conscientious web designer and show that they take care over the code they write for the web.
   
   
7. View the source code of vendors' previous websites where possible, and especially when dealing with overseas web developers: To do this, put your mouse over the web page, click your right-mouse-button and select “view source” from the dropdown list.
   
   Now do the following:
   
       a) Check that there is sufficient text in the source code which might provide search engines with relevant information. There should be clear and visible islands of readable text in the code, as well as all the stuff which is unfamiliar to you. If you want to see how a webpage looks to a search engine you can try using the iWebTools Spider Viewer here.
       b) Check that the code you see looks to belong to the website you are viewing and not a completely different business's website.
       c) You might be able to tell also if the website is spamming the searches engines with hidden text; look for long lists of keywords and key phrases in the source code that don't appear on the frontend interface of the website. If code something like “visibility:hidden” is anywhere near this list then likely as not, you've caught this potential vendor out spamming the search engines; something for which they may well get penalised. Putting such hidden information in textareas on invisible forms is one way that web designers try to con the search engines these days, now that they are almost bound to be caught hiding white text on a white page background.
       d) You can even check the quality of the code on their sites by using a W3C HTML validator. See our validation page to check for coding errors.
   
   You can also check that single scripts aren't being used to generate multiple pages. Click on a few pages and look at the page names - if they are all have the same file names (e.g. index.php, index.asp, index.aspx), then you should at the very least ask what has been done to optimise these pages for search engines.
   
   
8. If there is a gateway page leading to the website proper, this is often a bad sign. If the gateway page into the homepage uses Flash animation, this is a very bad sign.
   
   
9. Try and get a recommendation or referral for a good e-business supplier from someone who has used them. It is usually best not to go with a vendor who has approached you cold either by telephone or spam email. The best agencies tend to build up most of their trade through repeat business, referrals, the merits of their own website and ones they have designed, as well as professional tenders. They generally spend only a minimum of time and money on hard, 'cash down' advertising, and none at all on carpet bombing prospective customers with spam.
   
   
10. For overseas web services providers and web designers check that they have sufficient English language skills to do the work, or that they have web localisation or language specialists on hand. Even if you provide the copy for the website, there are many many instances where their level of language proficiency could affect the quality, usability and visibility of the end-product.
    
    
11. If you are still uncertain, then you could always pay for an Equifax check, or look up their information on the Companies House website or on Whois.

PLAN your web site

Web site planning is very important, and this is where customer's often fail to realise that they share the responsibility. Two important considerations for your new web site are:

Web site marketing prep: You need to have plenty of copy ready for each web page or web marketing services and search engine optimisation techniques may not be able to help you much.

e-Business case: You should at least have some idea of what your market advantage is, and how this can be deployed in an online web service. You need a Unique Selling Point as without it, lots of web site traffic to an attractive web site, may not result in your expected conversion rate from website visitors to website generated customers.

Chris Boswell, June 2007

(You are free to reproduce any of the information in this article or part thereof, so long as the byline remains intact and a link is provided back to this page)

Related information:

How to find the right domain name...

Check whether a domain name is available or buy a domain name...

Web design services...

Search engine optimisation tips...

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