Choosing a Web Designe
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Choosing a Web Designe
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Many small business owners struggle with deciding on how to make
the right choice for designing their website. They search the web for
help with their website and find that the choice is harder than they
thought. Currently there are (literally) millions of websites who claim
to be professional web designers. However, one must be careful in
choosing the right person or people in which to trust their company
image. In this article, I will attempt to categorize web designers into
manageable groups, and teach the reader the difference between the
types.
Web designers fall into four general categories: freelance
amateur, freelance professional, Web Design Company, Web Development
Firm.
Freelance Amateur
The majority of web
designers you will come across, especially searching the Internet, are
freelancers. That is, individuals who do web design but are not employed
by a web design company. Some are self-employed professionals but most
of these freelancers are amateur-hobbyist types. They find a copy of
FrontPage™ came with their MS Office™ Suite. They discovered how fun it
could be to make web pages so they started telling their friends that
they could "design" web pages.
The "pros" of using an amateur is
that they are very cheap. The "cons" are too numerous to mention, but
I'll point out a few. They have no training; they have little knowledge
of what makes a good website work; they do not understand HTML code or
CSS but only FrontPage point and click; they do not understand general
design and layout concepts and they have little real experience. The
biggest reason they should be avoided for the serious businessperson, is
that their work looks amateurish, which makes your company look
amateurish. Who wants that?
Freelance Professional
A professional is often defined by simply being paid.
People think that if you are paid for something, then you are
professional. Maybe that's true in the Olympics, but for the business
services world, you are not a professional until you are established and
respected as one by your clients and peers. Freelancer professional web
designers are a giant leap from the amateur in that they have
established a portfolio of respectable work. They have some sort of
qualified training and experience and they have credentials that can be
verified by contacting references. They have a good reputation with
their clients and other professionals. In general, a good freelance
professional web designer can be good person to have doing your site.
But they are hard to distinguish from the amateur when you are just
searching the web.
The upside is, if you find a good one they are
significantly cheaper than a web design company. But that is usually the
only upside. If the budget limits you, then a freelancer will do for a
small project. But anything seriously important should be left to a
professional company.
Some downsides to using a freelance pro are
that they are usually part-time, meaning they are limited in how much
time they can devote to your project. They are also limited in what they
can do for you. Most freelancers are specialists in one area and
generalists in everything else. Some have no skills in anything except
their one specialty and often you will have to find others to fill
roles. In addition, freelancers are not always cheap although many of
them are aspiring to create their own company; some are highly sought
after and charge $100 per hour or more for their work. My advice here
is, if you have that much to spend, go with a company that has a team of
professionals to get the job done in a timelier manner.
Web Design Company
This
is the next step beyond a freelance professional. The web design
company offers the "whole show". They provide real project management
and have pulled together a team of web experts to get a wider range of
jobs done. A company can provide a much higher level of expertise in web
design, programming, content development and more.
Such a company
is usually very small, yet large enough to handle larger scale
projects. Compared to the most highly qualified freelancer, a company
has a diversity of talent and collaboration working for them. The
end-result is usually a much higher quality product.
The only real
drawbacks are on the one hand, the web design company is more expensive
than a freelancer because there are many more people on the job.
However, you get what you pay for rings true. On the other hand, for
very large projects or long term development, web design companies may
be too small and usually do not have the human recourses to accommodate
that $500,000 contract. In the end, for serious business people looking
for quality and professionalism and who can't afford the big firm, this
is the way to go.
Web Development Firm
As
the title implies, a web development firm is like any traditional
company. They have a staff of office workers, they have owners and
officers, and they have a team of talented professionals who are paid a
good salary for their work. They often have a sales force that do inside
and outside sales. The quality of their work goes without saying, as
you could not be so well-established by doing shoddy work. These firms
offer teams of very talented professionals who work on your project and
get the job done in a timely and extremely efficient manner.
Additionally, they usually cover all aspects of website development
including marketing and advertising. They may have teams of specialists
that they can deploy to your location and work in-house under a
temporary contract. The possibilities are endless.
If price is not
an issue and the highest quality work is necessary, then this is who
you want to do the job. For smaller budget businesses, a quote from an
established web development firm might knock you off your chair, but
know that companies who have project requirements that reach hundreds of
thousands of dollars know the score. Thus, the only real drawback for a
web development firm is that they are usually very expensive. Then
again, cost is relative and bigger companies like to work with bigger
companies.
In summary, the choice is yours. I would recommend for
the serious businessperson, that you budget a decent amount of dollars
to properly design and execute a professional website. I would avoid the
amateur and outsource to an individual or company with good experience
and reasonable rates to create my web presence. If money were no object,
then I would only deal with established firms and pay the big bucks to
get the job done right and done well.
Keenan Fitzgerald is a professional web designer and business owner of Core Web Solutions, a top web design company in New York.
Core Web Solutions specializes in custom web design, small business web
design, website security and search engine optimization (SEO).
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Keenan_Fitzgerald
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