Finding a Web Design Company

[Rex Curtis]

The outsourcing genie today might have spawned its web over four
continents, but when it comes to the local spices and flavor, you
still need a developer at home. A web design company that is able to
understand the nature of your business and your customers is immensely
more useful than a bunch of developers in a smoke reeking room in
India or Philippines. In turn, while your cost may rise while opting
for a web design company at your hometown, it pays off to have a
homely feel to it.
Web designer is an easy species to find -over Internet and offline.
Each city hosts its own large mushrooming industry related to web and
graphics. Score of well established and professional companies will
give you plenty of options in terms of taste and feeling. While
building a website may be a science in itself, the design aspect is
very much an art, with due emphasis on user interactivity, layout and
colors. Not to be ignored are the peculiarities of each different kind
of target audience. While company X might be more suited to give a
professional and exquisite look, you might have to turn to company Y
for a hippie look if you are targeting college goers.
Start off with finding specific details about as many companies that
meet your requirement as possible. Places where you can get hold of
neat information are niche web directories, local listings and yellow
pages. And if you are not sure about the streets, Google Maps can dot
it for you with the company names on the city map. Yellow pages are
available both online and in print, and can also add up to your total
information. Remember, your decision needs to be based on factors like
your target audience, specialty of each company and their portfolio.
Costs spent here can add up enormously to your business in the longer
run.
Friends in the field and peer advice about different web designing
companies are also very helpful means. In fact, word of mouth
reviewing has been found to be the most sincere and effective form of
marketing. Experience of a like-minded pal who recently contracted a
designer can let you gauge their working ethics, environment and
degree of professionalism.
If you have been particularly impressed by a website, say of a local
Chinese caf', you might want to contact the developer straight away.
In that case you will have to locate the 'developer' link on the
website, usually a small one in the footer of the homepage. Or else,
you can compliment them for a brilliant website and ask them about
their designing company who developed it. If your web designer is in
sync with your audience's intuition, you can go a long way in creating
a site that works as they want it to, and a local designer can do it a
lot better than somebody unplugged from life here.