Web development · 25 Sep 2021 · 4 min read
How to choose a website development company
A website is a real investment for most businesses, often a meaningful share of a yearly budget. Every company offering to build one claims attractive, responsive design, which makes them look interchangeable at first glance. They are not.
This covers both halves of the decision: what you should be getting, and how to tell who will actually deliver it.
What web design covers
Web design is the process of planning and combining the aesthetic and functional elements — fonts, colour, graphics, content, images, structure and layout — that decide how a site looks, feels and works. Graphic design, interface design, user experience, search optimisation and the content itself all feed into it.
It matters more than it is usually budgeted for. Around 75% of users judge a company’s credibility on the visual design of its website alone: a poor-looking site makes visitors question whether the business behind it is legitimate, and a good one does the opposite.
What a good website has
Visual appeal and function together. Polished and professional, and quick and correct every time. Slow or broken pages undo good looks immediately.
Obvious navigation. Visitors are looking for information, not working to find it. A clear hierarchy is the difference.
Browser consistency. Behaving differently in Chrome, Safari and Firefox undermines the site’s own usability.
Room to breathe. Negative space lets a reader absorb information. Filling it just makes the page harder to read.
Devices, not desktops. More people browse on a phone than anything else. A site that is not built for that frustrates most of its audience.
Speed. Past two or three seconds, visitors start leaving. Loading time is a design priority, not an afterthought.
Current technology. A site built on current tools feels current even when the content has not changed.
Ten things to check before you sign
1. How well they understand your business
Look at their client list and the solutions built for each. Do they design around a client’s actual audience and brand, or hand out the same template dressed differently?
2. Cultural fit
How a company communicates, paces work and handles unexpected change tells you how the project will go. Look for a way of working that absorbs change through regular contact rather than treating it as a breach.
3. Design as well as development
Shortlist companies with real experience in both, not just coding. And if you need more than a website — automation, a mobile app, QA — check they offer it before you sign rather than after.
4. Communication
Poor communication derails otherwise capable projects. Find out who your point of contact is, which channels their team actually uses, and what a normal response time looks like.
5. Samples and references
A portfolio tells you what they can build. Talking to former clients tells you what it is like when a deadline slips. Ask for both.
6. Team expertise
A good team specialises across front-end, back-end, databases and architecture rather than doing a bit of everything adequately.
7. Cost, and what is inside it
Be wary of quotes far above or below the rest of the market, and ask exactly what is included — some agencies bundle tools that add cost without adding value.
8. A trial period
References can look good and still not tell you how a company handles your project. Ask for two or three weeks on a defined piece of work first.
9. Their hosting
Ask how backups work, how long they are retained, what uptime is guaranteed, and how the platform behaves under a traffic spike. Then ask what happens after launch — maintenance and updates are the line item most often left out of the first quote, and the one you will need most.
10. Who owns it afterwards
Make sure the contract gives you full ownership of the finished website, including source code and design assets, and that NDAs cover everyone who touches it. Agencies working across one industry sometimes reuse code between clients; a clear ownership clause is what stops that becoming your problem.
Before any of that: the domain
One decision made early and rarely revisited. The domain is your business’s
name online and should read like it; a .com remains the safest default for
reach. Give it more time than it seems to deserve — it is the hardest thing on
this list to change later.
The short version
Checking all ten takes real effort. It is the difference between hiring a development partner and finding out the hard way that you did not.
If you want to run these questions past us, our answers are on the web and app development page — including what we include after handover, which is question nine.