Web design

How to Choose a Web Designer Without Getting Stung

Your website is the public face of your business but a lot of people don’t pay
much (if any) attention to the question of how to choose a Singapore web design. For most
people, the choices fall into one of the following options:

Use a friend of a friend as your web design Singapore

This has the advantage that it’s often a free option but it has the major disadvantage
that you aren’t given the person’s full time attention. Quite often, changes
to your website will be done “tomorrow”, where tomorrow is always
in the future. And because you’re not paying for the job, you put up with this.
Even though your site may not be live yet or it may be broken.

Using a friend of a friend as a web designer also puts you at the mercy of
whatever program they want to use to design your site. It doesn’t matter to
them that they’re maybe the only person in your town or county who knows how
to use the particular platform they’re using. But it should matter to you as
it means that in the future, you’re beholden to them for every aspect of your
website design. Even if you are no longer in touch with them.

So either you’re stuck with a broken and obsolete web design Singapore or you’ve got
a website that you have no access to or you need to bite the bullet and pay
to have a replacement site.

Other web designer choices

Free online Singapore web design

There are lots of sites out there which will offer to build a website for you
at no cost (apart from all the added extras they try to sell you once you’re
hooked into their program).

These have a number of disadvantages:

If you want to do something even slightly different with your web design, you’ll
often encounter a “computer says no” response.

A lot of free web design company singapore sites use systems such as Flash to make the design
process easier. This works well for you designing the website but works badly
for Google – it’s the equivalent of hanging a great big “no entry”
sign on your website as far as Google are concerned and you’ll struggle to get
your website found in the search engines.

You’re at the mercy of the company providing the free service. They need to
get money from somewhere, so there will either be adverts on your site or anything
beyond a very basic site will cost extra. You are also at their mercy as to
whether or not they stay in the Singapore web design business at all. So you could wake
up one morning and find your site has disappeared or that you’ve been given
14 days notice of eviction.

You’re at the mercy of their terms and conditions. You know, the things you
never read before you press the “I agree” button. These may be broad
or restrictive. They probably allow the web designer company to change terms
at a moments notice. Or they could ban you from doing certain things – if WordPress
host your site (but not if you run WordPress on a domain you own) then you’re
not allowed to use it for commercial purposes; if Blogger host your site then
you’re not allowed to use it to boost your position in the search engines. And
if you break any of the terms and conditions on a free web designer host then
you could find your site banned or suspended at a moments notice with about
as much chance of appeal as a life sentence prisoner has.

Pay a mate’s rate for your web designer

This is close to being the same as using a friend of a friend except you pay
for the privilege.

Before you go down this route, check whether the mate’s rate really is the
bargain you think it is. I’ve often come across situations where the so-called
cheap mate’s price is actually more expensive than a commercial rate.

Use a professional web designer

They may well use the same tools as the cheaper options above but they will
be using them day in, day out. So they’ll know what is best for your business
and what actually works in real life. So your web designer won’t be using your
website as the guinea pig.

If you’re moving from another website host or from a free option to a proper
website, a professional web designer will know how to schedule the job so that
your site is always available. Your new website design will be made behind the
scenes and only switched on once you’re happy with it.

Chances are that you’ll also pay less for your hosting than you would with
some of the free or supposedly cheap options. A lot of template based web designer
sites will offer upgrades to hosting which may sound cheap – a tenner a month
or whatever – but is actually well over priced if you’re not doing the kind
of business that Amazon is. So over the course of a year or two you’ll actually
save more than your web designer costs in reduced charges elsewhere.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6282859

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