Your corporate website is often the first touchpoint between your business and potential new customers. An outdated, poorly designed, or confusing website can cost you lost revenue and damage your business’s credibility. Hiring the right corporate web design company to create or overhaul your corporate website is crucial yet challenging. Follow these top 10 tips to find the best web design partner for your company’s online presence.
1. Clarify Your Goals and Requirements
Before even contacting web designers, get crystal clear on what you want your new corporate website to accomplish. Define essential pages, key conversion funnels, technical requirements, and must-have features. Provide this website wish list to vendors to determine who best fits your needs and vision. Prioritizing business goals over trends ensures you get a site tailored for long-term success.
2. Research Their Specialties and Past Work
Pay attention to the specific industries, services, and types of sites in a design firm’s portfolio. B2B service sites have different functionality needs than e-commerce platforms, for instance. Look for case studies and reviews showcasing successful developing sites similar to your vision. Cross-check their corporate web design work to ensure excellent user experience principles were followed.
3. Validate Technical Expertise
Ask specifically about their development stack, IT infrastructure partners, hosting solutions, compliance standards knowledge, and security protocols. You want confidence they can handle modern web design challenges like responsiveness, mobile-first layouts, analytics integrations, APIs, and performance optimization. Don’t be shy about asking for technical specifics – this determines the foundation your site is built.
4. Require a Detailed Project Plan
Insist on a step-by-step project plan covering discovery, wireframes, design phases, content creation, development, testing, training, launch, and post-launch maintenance. Clear expectations and timelines ensure no steps get missed communication channels stay open. Having scheduled touchpoints also makes pivoting smoother if business needs to shift.
5. Compare Overall Value for Money
Balance rates and project fees with the quality of work each design firm provides. Ask for client referrals and samples of previous work. While going with the cheapest bid seems prudent, it often leads to shoddy or cookie-cutter sites requiring expensive reworks soon after. Spend accordingly to capability but don’t overpay either.
6. Request Multiple Design Concepts
Part of the vendor selection process should include proposing site designs for feedback. Even if you love their portfolio overall, you want some say in the vision for your own company. Design is subjective, so the concepts presented give you insight into their creative style and process. Be ready to offer constructive criticism though – they can’t read your mind!
7. Ask About Post-Launch Support Plans
Your corporate website will need regular maintenance, updates, hosting, troubleshooting, and marketing integrations. During negotiations, inquire about post-launch support contracts for seamless long-term partnerships. Conversely, factor hand-off complexities if switching providers down the road. Don’t get saddled managing a site you can’t maintain.
8. Meet Their Actual Project Team
When meeting principal vendors, request introductions to the designers, developers, project managers, and account reps who will work on your corporate site. You want confidence in their qualifications and responsive communication abilities. Since websites have many moving pieces, you’ll interface with several team members throughout the engagement.
9. Check Referrals and Read Reviews
Part of due diligence is getting candid feedback from past clients on their experience partnering with the web design firm. Probe not just on final product satisfaction but also on responsiveness, project management and their ability to implement corrections or changes. Corporate sites evolve so you want a vendor who sticks with you beyond the launch date.
10. Trust Your Gut Instincts
Technical capabilities, strong portfolios and fair rates are imperative. Yet the intangibles matter too – specifically, how confident and comfortable you feel with the web design team. Do you communicate well? Will they proactively guide you through challenges? For long-term success, you want a consultative partner invested in your vision as much as you are.
Conclusion:-
Hiring the right web design company takes time but pays off exponentially through higher online conversions and stronger credibility with customers. Define your goals, vet vendors thoroughly, and invest wisely. Your corporate website is the hub connecting your business to the online world – choose your designer partner carefully!
