The Risks of Using an Inexperienced Web Design Company
You’re looking to save money on web design for your business… we get it. But choosing the cheapest web design company is rarely a good idea. Low prices can indicate a lack of experience, and experience matters. A lot. Here’s why.
Technology is Constantly Changing
If you’re googling how to select the right web design company that’s good, it means you’re prepared to invest time in making a considered decision about which web design company is right for you. When you’re doing your research, we recommend you look for web designers with the experience and knowledge to respond to constant technological changes including:
- Security threats – Experienced web designers should know how to protect websites against security threats and alerts. If you opt for an inexperienced designer, your site will likely be more vulnerable to data breaches, spam, malware, viruses, and hacking attempts.
- Software updates – Website Content Management Systems routinely issue software updates, but it’s up to web design companies (or website owners) to install these updates. Failure to do so can affect website performance, including page upload speed and site reliability; driving frustrated potential customers away from your site.
- Website features + functionality – Need an online shop? An events calendar? A membership platform or booking system? At Web-Sta we’ve been using WordPress for more than a decade, meaning we know how to offer clients a plethora of value-add functions, professional image galleries, online reviews, automation and more. If you choose an inexperienced web design company they likely won’t be aware of the many amazing features on offer, meaning your website will miss out on functionality, and wow factor!
SEO is an Art Form
From your point of view as a business owner, Search Engine Optimisation is simple: you want your website to come up in as many searches as possible and to rank at the top of each page when it does. Theoretically it all sounds pretty straightforward, but SEO is truly an art form!
It takes web designers years of experience to finely hone their approach to SEO. Then they need to continually tweak their methods, as Google and other search engines frequently update their algorithms. To give you an idea of the challenge of doing SEO well; here are some of the factors that need to be taken into account:
- Ensuring your website structure is ‘mobile-bot friendly’ so that it can be indexed quickly for mobile phone searches. Basically this means your site needs to be set up in such a way that search engine crawlers can access it easily.
- Creating ‘Google-friendly’ featured snippets. What is a featured snippet? It’s that singular little answer box that shows up on search results pages, above the list of organic search results. If you rank number one on a search engine results page but don’t ‘own’ the featured snippet, you’ll get 30% less traffic than if you also ‘own’ the snippet.
- Building a logical site structure supported by appropriate internal linking. It’s more complicated than this, but as a starting point, key website pages need to be linked to internally, numerous times, to help Google understand that these pages are important.
How to Select the Right Web Design Company
It’s important to be aware of the risks of choosing an inexperienced web design company. However, there are other factors you’ll want to consider, beyond experience.
Here’s a couple of questions that might help to make a decision:
- Accessibility | is there a single person I can always contact who is responsible for my site? You need to be able to contact someone directly who understands your business and your website.
- Responsiveness | What’s their approach to customer support? If your site crashes or has issues you need to know you’re going to get the support you need ASAP.
- Understanding | How are you treated by the web design company? Do they express an interest in understanding your business before preparing a quote? Do they welcome your questions and information?
Finding the right web design company for you is important as your website is a vital business tool for growing and evolving your business. We recommend that you do your research, and ask lots of questions of every web design company.
