What You Should Be Looking for When Choosing a Web Design Company?

"A website design should serve your visitors, not just be a pretty canvas that no one can make sense of, but offering the visitor an experience to remember."

The Difference Between a Good and Bad Web Design

Although design, artwork and graphics are subjective — some will like one thing and others won't — it does depend on your design goals as a business and how you want to portray your company in the digital space, whether with a website or among the social media gathering.

So Where Do We Start?

Take a badly designed site as an example. Here are some of the things that can go wrong:

1. Logo/brand identity mismatch — not a bad logo in itself, but there can be a mismatch between the website's brand and the logo, sending a confusing message to the visitor.
2. Home page image — a lack of thought about composition or use of a proper image with a strapline, message or call to action can make an image feel like it's just been dropped onto the home page with no purpose or direction.
3. Image quality — poor quality, jagged or oversized images that overlap their containers undermine trust immediately.
4. Body text — inconsistent fonts, colours and point sizes are off-putting to the reader. If you don't care for your website, how can visitors trust you care about their business?
5. Irrelevant advertising — adverts that don't match the site's context or width look unprofessional and out of place.
6. Broken hover states — small CSS oversights, like footer links disappearing on hover, chip away at polish.
7. Using images instead of HTML for information — as well as looking grainy, search engines prefer text so they can index the page for its content.

Overall, a site with these issues would score low on design and most technical SEO areas — a fair 3 out of 10. No amount of touch up can resolve evident website design issues like these.

So What Should You Be Expecting from a Good Web Design Company?

1. Requirements Phase

As the client, you should be taken through a requirements analysis phase before any graphic designer starts. This should include your business objectives, demographic, mobile compliance requirements, and any advertising or brand standards that need to be adhered to.

2. Initial Design Phase

A web designer worth their salt should be recommending designing the layout of 'what goes where' first, before starting to code. User eXperience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are important elements of designing a website, and something most design companies miss out entirely or rarely consider in depth. Wireframe designs can be part of this process, showing how pages are interlinked and how the user can drill down into the content. This process should be presented to you for sign off before proceeding with the graphic/artwork.

3. Detailed Design Mock Ups

Expect a high resolution mock up of your website design before any web development takes place.

It's very common for a design company to adopt the use of ready-made website templates. This is fine if the design meets your requirements or can be modified to suit, but presenting you with a high-res design and skipping stage 2 above is a shortcut method for web design that can be hit and miss with your end product.

4. Project Management and Updates

You may think it's a given, but it's often overlooked. Project management and communication of your web design project is important. You need to know what is happening throughout the lifecycle. Some companies use online project management software to manage your expectations and update you with relevant milestones and design updates on a 24/7 basis. At the least, you should be given regular email updates and be involved in the process. An initial design meeting is a good idea before anyone gets their hands on a mouse.

5. Testing

A website audit and user testing should all be completed before pressing the 'go live' button. Ironing out any anomalies or issues should be captured during a website audit.

User testing, mobile device and browser testing should all be included as part of the package. Make sure you ask about these aspects, because a pretty web design on the surface can have some nasty issues lurking within it, and in the end lose you money.

An Example Web Design Process

Phase 1 – Logo Branding & Identity
Industry research, design inspiration, sketching and mind mapping, three concept ideas, client feedback, digital implementation, colour and typefaces, and final revisions.

Phase 2 – Content Strategy
Decide what the website will be about, its purpose and audience. Text, images, artwork, video and other media.

Phase 3 – Information Architecture
How the pages and content will be organised. Low fidelity wireframes showing navigation layout and content for all types of pages (e.g. home page, category page and product pages).

Phase 4 – Visual Design
Design a look and feel that enhances the content and information architecture. High fidelity mock ups that show content, information architecture, colour and style. Design templates for all page types, including custom PPC landing pages. Navigation, colour scheme, banners, images and artwork.

Phase 5 – Website Coding and Development
Create a development/test environment. Code the website and pages using HTML5, CSS3 and W3C compliant coding, with SEO compliance built in.

Phase 6 – Testing / Quality Assurance
Cross browser compatibility testing. Mobile device testing.

Phase 7 – Modifications / Revisions
Client feedback, site modifications and minor changes.