Guest author: Christine Anderssen
When to Hire a Web Designer
One of the biggest problems faced by entrepreneurs just starting out is that of cash flow. There never seems to be enough money to pay for everything that needs to be paid for! This leads to a trend to try and do everything yourself, from creating the product, the marketing, sales and so forth. After all, time is cheap, not so?
It then often happens that the entrepreneur tries to build his own website since it just seems to be too expensive to have someone else build it.
For a while this home-made site might be enough to serve its purpose but very soon the business owner discovers that as his business grows, the website just does not provide such a good image of the company any more, or as the product range expands or the focus of the business changes, that the website just does not provide the correct information any longer.
It is at this stage that the business owner might consider getting a professional in to do the site.
Hopefully at this stage the business is established enough so that it has some more cash flow and the owner might even have some budget! It is at this stage that the business owner should consider hiring a web designer instead of doing it himself again.
Let's take a look at the reasons why it would be better to take this route rather than the do-it-yourself route again.
Firstly, there is a reason why a good web design company charges a sometimes considerable, fee for a website. Frankly, building a website so that it works in all browsers, has a good design and presents all the information about the company in a pleasing, eye-catching and user-friendly fashion takes expertise, and expertise costs money. For web design companies to survive and pay their staff good salaries they need to charge a premium fee for building your website. You are not paying just for the website though, you are also paying for the advice, the support and the long term relationship that you are building up with your website design company so that your website can evolve and stay current with the latest technologies and trends.
This is why, even though it is very tempting, you should be careful with accepting the cheapest quote. There must be a reason why the quote is so cheap. You could try and fool yourself by saying that the designer might be desperate for work and is therefore under-quoting to get the contract - the problem is that most good designers do not struggle to find work, even in a depressed economy. The more likely reason is that the company or freelancer is not experienced enough to realize how much work is involved and is therefore not quoting correctly, or, that they give bad quality work and is therefore desperate for work and prepared to undercut the competition in order to get the work. Neither of these two scenarios is going to have a good website as the end result!
Beware then of going for the cheapest quote however tempting it may be. You also do not have to take the most expensive quote either - too expensive is just as bad! Normally quotes range from very cheap to very expensive, ensure that you ask for at least five quotes, then investigate the mid-range quotes carefully and make your selection from those after you have spoken to the company or freelancer and investigated their portfolio.
With your business growing you need to ensure that your website can grow with it, and the only way to ensure that is to build a long term relationship with a reputable web design company that will stay the course.
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you, a web design and hosting company specializing in building cost effective websites for business owners in South Africa.
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