Have you ever wondered if the company or freelancer you hired to build up your website from scrap did a great job, or you paid for a worthless product?! If yes, do not panic. It does not matter that you do not know anything related to web development: user experience, accessibility, usability, layout, and other things that make the differences between a Da Vinci masterpiece and a 5 year-old painting. This article will guide you through the entire process of your website's development, so that you know what to ask, what to say, when to say to your web developer. The result, the best website you could ever have.
First of all, you should find a web development company, a freelancer, or perhaps a friend that has a vast portfolio and experience in this domain. Of course, searching for "web design" on Google or other search engines won't do any good. Perhaps the best way is this one. You pick up a couple of websites that you like, and open them in your browser. Than, look at the footer of each of these websites, and visit its designer's website. You will probably find a link like "designed by", "concept by" plus "Company name". You now have about 5 such companies. Hopefully, not all the websites you know are developed by the same company.
Next step is finding other similar web development companies.
You may do that by using Google toolbar.
It has an option so that you can easily see related websites to the one you are currently seeing. If not, open Google in your web browser, and type "related:http://www.domainname.com" where domainname.com is the domain name of a company you have just visited.
Pick up the first 5 websites related to the one you viewed in the past, and bookmark them all. Like this, you'll have by now about 30 different web development companies in your list.
Then, you must compare them all and eliminate all the ones that have really high prices, and portfolios under 10 websites. Perhaps you should consider eliminating some of the companies that have low prices for their services, as low prices mean most of the time low quality. You should also look into testimonials. Don't make the same mistakes other people did before you!
Now, if you have reduced your list to only one company, great job. You could skip the next paragraph and finally get to know what really matters when building a website. Because that is the most important thing of the entire process, and this article should be about that, not a quick guide to choosing a web development company for your project. So, half the battle is yours by now!
If your list is now like 5 different companies, or why not 10, what should you do now? Asking your wife about what she thinks may not be the best idea. There are multiple locations where you can find information about websites in general, about web companies, get your website reviewed by others and so on. Almost every big web design community has a "website critique", "website review" category in their forums. Some of them may have related content such as web developer review. If you cannot find information regarding a specific company, there is a better way to do it. I personally like the concept of Web International Awards. It is a site review tool and ranking system for web developers, freelancers worldwide. In order to see what the companies in your list are up to, you must look for them in the website's database. If they are not there, do not panic. Anyone can submit websites for review. Yes, you are one of the ones who can do it. Just register, and submit one or two projects from the portfolios of the companies you have in your list. They will be reviewed and it should then be clear which company is best for you. You should always consider looking in the website's database to find other companies that you haven't heard of before.
Oh, almost forgot. You can find Web International Awards at http://www.webia.info .Do not be scared if the website looks empty, small. It's capabilities are huge, and important to you!
Now you are all set. You have the company that you are about to hire. You like their prices, you like websites in their portfolio, past clients now worship them. So, here starts the second part of the battle.
What exactly must you look for when telling your web designer what you need?
You should look at code . But hey, you don't know anything about programming. Doesn't matter. If it looks nice, is well organized, and perhaps you see within some comments like "this function automatically checks if the entered email is valid", it means that the person you have hired, is indeed a professional.
Before your website is complete, you should make sure that the website looks, and especially works the same on as many browsers as it can. I suggest you check it using Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera browsers, which have by now a huge percentage regarding their expanding.
One of the most important things in a websites overall feeling is its design . You should really pay attention to its graphics. They must not hurt your eye, color tones should be nice, chosen in such a manner to point out what the website is telling to the visitors.
The website must have a good layout. Headers must be headers, footers must be footers, and content areas must have content, not copyright information. One of the most important things in a website's layout is probably its navigation menu. When visiting a website, you should always be able to answer these questions:
Where am I? (Present)
Where can I go? (Future)
Where have I been? (Past)
You must pay attention to the website's homepage layout too. A home page must always provide you with information to another set of guidelines:
What is this place?
Do not get in the repeat visitor's way.
Must show what's new.
Must provide a very good global navigation
Yes, the home page must tell you what the website is about, and quick too. This is probably the most important goal of a home page. Otherwise, new visitors to your website won't know what they can find in your website or what is has to offer. If they don't know that, they will feel dumb, leave, and they will never return. Would you hang out with someone who has just made you feel like a retarded idiot? I don't think so. This is all about making the best first impression, which matters the most.
The website must also provide new information for visitors that return to your website after a while, otherwise the website will now look boring. The layout of the website must not get in their way to finding new information, so that is why you need the easy access and precise global navigation.
All this for what? Oh yes! Content . Websites with no content suck right? Why see them if they don't tell anything else than "lorem ipsum Dolores …" or dummy text if you like, text that developers use when developing a template. You can have great coding in your website. It can have a marvelous design, but if the content is bad, you won't get Da Vinci's masterpiece. An important thing when it comes to content is your company's logo. The website must be constructed in such a manner so your logo stands out and is remembered by your visitors. Perhaps your slogan too. Pages that must provide crucial information about your company are the contact pages, and about pages. Make sure these two pages provide the information in a personal manner, that point out your company's qualities. You do not want a contact page that looks the same like other 1.000.000 contact pages. You choose which one of the bellow is best.
"TSK Media delivers world-class web products such as portals, web applications and small websites, advertising strategies and marketing plans."
"TSK Media is one of the biggest IT&C companies in the United Kingdom . It is composed of three different firms, their subsidiaries and affiliates. Each of these three firms specializes in one domain: web development, advertising, marketing. Each of these firms is a separate independent legal entity operating under the name of TSK Media, or other related names, such as TSK Web Development, TSK Advertising or TSK Marketing.
During its 10 years of activity, the company has gathered vast experience and has a huge portfolio of projects, developed in the past to satisfy our customers."
The content must keep the visitor busy, must not let him/her get bored. You must earn their respect so as to stay awhile on your website and read the information it provides. You should also count your important keywords. If the page you are now navigating is about horses for example, keywords like horse/horses, stable and other related words should appear a lot in the page, so that your SEO score is high. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is important. The better it is, the better you will rank in search engines results pages. It is important that your website is submitted to as many web directories with similar content to your website as possible once it is completed too.
So, you have also found out that an important thing in your website's success is its SEO .
Least but not last, an important key is user science . The website must be highly accessible. First of all, forms must allow visitors to type what they need. The forms must give them room to type. Of course, name, surname, email, phone inputs must not be huge, but comments, suggestions, text areas like that must provide enough space. If a user does something wrong when submitting such a form, they must see a nice error message, explaining what they did wrong, then the possibility to return to the previous page with all the information intact. You do not want to write a 3-page suggestion again just because you have mistyped your email address. They should always know what elements in your form are mandatory and which are not.
Conclusion
The website must always provide solutions that work for people, not the other way around. The user must be able to navigate easily, find the information they need. They must understand the website's structure, how it can be used most effectively without any headaches. They must feel great when navigating your website, in love, and never ever leave, or even if they do that, the website must make sure they come back.
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