Web Design and SEO Thoughts and IdeasHelp us make this a place for exchanging unbiased thoughts and ideas.

 
I had an interesting call from a lady the other day asking to speak to David something or other from Google.  I politely explained that we weren’t in fact Google, but merely a clever little web design and seo company that prayed on people looking to contact Google!!  Ok so that’s a little bit elaborate!

Anyway, this lady asked me if I knew how to contact Google and so I asked her what she was interested in talking to Google about and so the story began.

This lady has two young children, lives in the Yorkshire Dales with her husband who repairs and services Agas as far as I can tell.  She decided some time ago to set up a website selling lighting, kitchens, bathrooms etc online.  She paid a web design company a reasonable sum of money to design a website and optimize it for the search engines.  Five years later, she now has 6 or 7 domains, one rather confusingly constructed website that ranks nowhere significant in the search engines.  The web design company she is using seem content to keep asking her for more money and providing a poor service.  In the five years she’s been online you could count the number of enquiries she’s had on one hand………….with three fingers chopped off!!

As our conversation unfolded I could tell that she was desperate to find out why her website was doing so poorly and why there were no enquiries.

Over the phone I started to look at her website with her and soon discovered a myriad of issues that were impacting on not only the site’s ability to rank effectively but also confusing the selling message to potential customers.  By the end of our conversation I was being asked to put together a proposal to sort the problems out. The only difficulty with that is the fact that I need to charge a fee and she has very little money left to invest.  Not to mention the fact that she’s also apprehensive about yet another web company.

The great news for her is that I’ll find a way to make it work for her and get her back on the right track.  I just need to find my ole top hat and a white rabbit from somewhere!

This conversation is not the first I’ve had of this kind and it got me thinking about why it happens and what I can do about it. So I thought I’d do a tips and tools for choosing a good web company, so here goes:

• Any good web designer will be designing web sites following the W3C standards of design. Simple test: select a website from their portfolio, right click anywhere to the side of the main page. Somewhere down the list, near the bottom, you should see something listed as “view source” or “view page source”.  Click on it and it’ll open a window full of wierd programming language stuff.  At the top of the page, the first thing you should see is a Document Type.

Example:

“>”-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1 strict.dtd
 
This piece of code gives you a very small sign that the design company works to proper standards.  This is no guarantee on its own, but it’s one of a list of ingredients that help to determine the quality of the company

• Ask them if they use tables or frames in their designs.  Current thinking is that websites should be tabless in design. That’s not to say that tables are evil! But a good web designer will keep the use of tables to a minimum because they are not as easy for Google to index.
• Check their own website to see if all the links and functionality works as it should.  For example: gallery of designs that doesn’t function properly, links to sites they’ve designed that no longer work.  All of these are signs that the company doesn’t keep it’s own website up to date.  For a web design company, their own website should be their greatest marketing tool.
• Are they transparent with information?  I have had a number of clients who say their existing provider tells them that their website is receiving so many hundreds of visitors a month but yet there are no sales.  Ask them to provide evidence of the claims on a report other than their own in-house one.  No web or seo consultancy worth their salt should worry about sharing information if it’s genuine.  Google analytics is a great tracking tool for your website.  It’s free and takes a short amount of time to set up for a medium sized website.  You should be given access to this by your web design agency……after all, it’s your business information!
• If you’re looking for web design services, select 2-3 previous clients from their portfolio, ring them and ask them what the experience was like and if they would use them again.  For seo services, do the same but always ask what the improvements have been like since the agency started providing seo for the client.
• Ask to see their qualifications. For some of the older individuals this may be less easy to come by given the time period. However, they should still be able to show you some qualifications or accreditations even if it’s a certificate saying they are Google AdWords certified or W3 certified.
• Do they really take the time to understand your business, understand your competitive environment and your marketplace?  Or, do they just sit there and say “yes we can do that” and “yes that’s no problem”.  A sure sign that you’re hiring a designer rather than a consultant.  A good web design and seo consultancy will approach your design from a business perspective first. I.e. what’s are you trying to sell, who to, who do you see as your competition, how competitive is your idea.  All of these questions are getting to the heart of understanding what needs to be achieved.  Only then can you begin to suggest appropriate routes for design.
• Get quotes from different companies, even if you really like the first company you speak to.  A great salesperson can make you think your getting genuine goods and service yet rob you blind.  A design or SEO company’s quote should be somewhere around market rate.  If there is a wide variance in prices, question it, ask why they are either so much more expensive or cheaper.

The above is just a snippet of things to consider in finding the right sort of web company, but if you work on the above you’ll definitely be heading in the right direction.  Alternatively, if you are already using a web company and want to know if they are up to the job, give us a call and we’ll vet them for you!  Yes I mean it, we want the best for you whether it’s with us or someone else.

Have a great day!