Choosing the Right Web Design Firm
Before you start shopping for design firms, you first must have a good idea as to the role of your website within your business. Once you have specifically defined roles that your website will play, then you can start your research for a web design firm that will help you build a site that will meet your needs and objectives.
During your research, pay special attention to the consistency of the work of the design firm candidate amongst its different clients. High quality work amongst all clients is a good sign of an outstanding work ethic. Once you have completed your preliminary research, narrow down your candidates to five or less, and then requests proposals from each.
Here are some helpful web design tips:
Code Bloat: Sites that are created using software such as dreamweaver or frontpage will often yield a lot of "code bloat". Code bloat involves page code that has a lot of unnecessary tags, tables, styles, etc. To rid of excess styles, remove them and put them in an off-page style sheet.
Site Objective: Make sure your website has a clearly defined objective and you comunicate that objective to your web design firm. A " web presence" is not an objective. Your site need to grab your visitor's attention, answer the "what's in it for me?" question and then lead them to your ultimate goal. Ken Evoy from SiteSell calls this your "most wanted response". In other words decide what you most want your visitor to do, whether it be to buy a product, contact you for more info, click through to an affiliate partner or subscribe to your newsletter, and then structure your site in a way that the path your vistor takes leads to achieving that objective.
Javascript Navigation: Javascript can make for some real neat navigation features on websites. However, it is not always a good idea to use Javascript to enhance navigation. The downside is that it can inhibit search engine spiders from ever crawling past the home page, which will eventually start to prevent an increase for the relevant search engine rankings of your targeted keyword phrases.
Text in Images: Obviously, a major goal for web design is to create a site that is the most appealing and attractive as possible. This commonly leads to the practice of using images to portray text. While the text may look more attractive in the form of an image, it is invisible to search engine spiders. Therefore, if the text is relevant search content, do not put it in the form of an image .
Logo Design: There are many web design firms that also have the capability to design a logo for your company. Logos are more important then you may think. First impressions in marketing mean everything, and logos have a lot to do with establishing a first impression. When choosing a firm for logo design, try visiting one that has logo design samples so you can get an idea of the quality of their previous work.
Contribute your tips and ideas here and get a quality link to your site from your added content. Email us at ppmlinks@polepositionmarketing.com for details.
Keep in mind that the web design firm you choose will be creating your company's brand image for the online world. So choose wisely and never rush into a decision.
Guess who is #6 on Google for our top search terms? That's right... you guessed it... ME! (Thanks to you!). My home page is there as of yesterday. Man, that is impressive. The sites that have been on the first page have been there for a LONG time and they still are, but now there is one more. I really appreciate your talents and I look forward to seeing what else you can 
do with my site. THANK YOU!
