Where to order a website: How to choose a website developer and not lose money?
You needed a website to start a business from scratch or launch a startup, scale an existing project or increase sales during a crisis. BUT:
- Do you have a vague idea of what a technical specification is and how to approach choosing a web studio?
- Or do you have a sad experience of ordering a website, when the project turned into a big problem, eating up the budget and lasting for many months?
Choosing a developer is a serious matter. You don't just entrust him with running your project, you trust him with your business. How to overcome the difficulties of choice and determine whether a particular web studio is right for you?
We have previously briefly considered a similar topic in our blog, namely the main questions and misconceptions when choosing a developer. But when communicating with clients, we realized that a number of issues are not sufficiently covered in it and when serious sums are at stake, it is important to pay attention to a wider list of details. Therefore, in this article we provide a step-by-step plan for choosing a developer based on an analysis of the questions of our existing and potential clients, as well as our own more than five years of experience in developing websites as a Web studio.
We have identified several key criteria; assessing them will help you find an experienced company that can create not just a website, but an effective resource that will bring results and recoup your investment.
- The purpose of creating a new web resource and its type.
- Range of services and developer experience.
- Experience in your market niche.
- Geolocation of the web studio.
- Portfolio, cases, company reputation.
- Cost of services for creation, promotion and support.
- Content management system (CMS).
- Terms of reference (TOR) and contract.
- Where to order a website?
A detailed acquaintance with the criteria we have identified will help you avoid most of the most common mistakes when choosing a contractor and get the necessary effective conversion tool for your business.
1. “The end determines the means” - Freelancer or studio? How to choose?
First, decide why you need a website, who it is aimed at, what goals and objectives you plan to solve with the help of this resource. How will the project develop and its effectiveness be assessed? Before ordering a website, select its type. How to choose the right type of site? – read in our blog.
If you have ambitious goals and a highly competitive environment, then you should not skimp on creating your virtual representative office on the Internet. High-quality development requires high qualifications. If you just want to establish your presence on the World Wide Web, an inexpensive website made by a freelancer will suit you. But! You need to remember, the lower the price, the higher the risks! Are freelance services suitable for solving your business problems or should you contact a studio? What is the appropriate cost for an effective website? We talk about all this and only in this blog.
If you do not clearly understand how to prepare business requirements for a site, contact the developer. You will be asked to fill out a detailed brief, after answering the questions of which, the specific goals, objectives and scale of the project will acquire clear outlines. which will allow us to find the best solutions and reflect their implementation in the technical specifications. Responsible web developers will never require a completely finished (100%) technical specification. Even if you come with your technical specifications, they will give feedback and often professional criticism to avoid common mistakes, and they set the task together with the customer, since they bear full responsibility for the quality and efficiency of the project.
2. Range of services and age of the company
These two criteria are interrelated: the longer a developer is on the IT market, the greater the range of services he can offer. It is more profitable to order comprehensive business solutions online. From creation to promotion and regular development. A company that can provide the full development cycle of a project, as well as its subsequent promotion and scaling, deserves more trust.
When analyzing potential developers for your project, pay attention to their experience. Beginners are not always able to cope with the task; they are just learning from your project. In our practice, there have been cases when customers asked to “rework the site” because the previous developer declared himself “bankrupt”, closed down and handed over only partially completed unfinished work.
Finishing other people's projects is a thankless task. Understanding someone else's logic and looking for bugs in the code is a waste of time. Therefore, we consider such work inappropriate. To prevent such situations, we highly recommend that you contact experienced specialists whose reputation has been tested by market conditions for 3 or more years. Of course, not all beginning developers are amateurs, but in a crisis it is better to play it safe and work with already experienced players.
3. Is studio experience in your market niche important?
A big plus for a potential web developer will be the presence of works on your topic in his portfolio. But modern UI/UX design techniques are quite universal and, based on a consistent approach to studying a niche and analyzing behavioral scenarios, allow you to create a user interface and functionality for any niche.
Judge the developer’s capabilities by the variety of topics (niches) of work in his portfolio, and not by the presence of work in your niche, since then the scope of his marketing/entrepreneurial thinking is limited to one niche and he will not be able to offer you radically new solutions for your niche that will highlight Your conversions will set you apart from your competitors. Therefore, the variety of niches in the portfolio and the non-standard solutions found by the developer in them are more important than experience in only one of your niches.
Experienced companies, using methods of target audience analysis, such as “Character Development”, “Client Avatar” and the like, create high-quality websites even in niches that are new to them. It is important for professionals to develop their versatility, so they need practice in different directions.
4. Where is the studio located?
Is the geographic location of a development studio's office important?
Yes - if you want to evaluate the company’s office and individual team members by their appearance before starting work, make sure of the originality of certificates and awards, drink a cup of coffee or cocoa and tea... But don’t forget, the more luxurious the office, the more expensive its rent, and its the cost will be reflected in the cost of this company’s services for the implementation of your project.
No - if you accept the challenges and conditions of modern digital society, which opens up new opportunities and forms of work. All risks of remote cooperation can be minimized at the stage of selecting a contractor by studying his portfolio, reputation and reviews of previous clients. The approved terms of reference and the signed contract will guarantee the fulfillment of obligations.
5. Portfolio, cases and company reputation
When choosing a development company, look at the portfolio - do you like the designer’s style, is the interface user-friendly, do the resource pages load quickly, does the mobile version work? Study the image of the web studio on the market, its activity and work results. Read reviews not only on the developer’s website, but also on third-party resources.
What will it give? An idea of the level of professionalism and preparedness of the team, its ability to cope with tasks similar to yours. If everything is satisfactory, proceed to negotiations and discussion of details, drawing up technical specifications for the project. But first, find out the company’s pricing policy and what the cost of its services consists of.
6. Cost of services for creating a website
To assess the cost of development, it is important to understand what it consists of. Typically, the cost of web studio services includes the following work costs:
- Preparatory (at the technical specification stage): Analysis of competition in the niche and the websites of the main competitors. Finding the best solutions;
- UI/UX design: Template or unique design; The latter may also include prototyping the main pages where the main user actions take place;
- Adaptive layout of all design pages;
- Programming: Implementation of functionality based on the selected “engine” and, accordingly, basic and/or custom functionality;
- Project management and project testing;
- Other expenses, such as office rent.
Compare the prices of different developers and choose “somewhere in the middle” from those you are interested in. Newbies usually offer the lowest, dumping price, and if you pay the highest, you, without knowing it, will incur additional costs for the brand and renting an expensive office of a famous developer. Read more about pricing for IT products in our article “How much does an effective website cost in 2020?”
7. Content Management System (CMS)
A fundamental question to ask a potential contractor is: “What CMS do you work with? What system do you recommend for our project?
Why do you need to know the answer to this question? There are hundreds of content management systems (CMS): simple and complex, paid and free, self-written and with ready-made page templates. If a potential developer gives a detailed, reasoned answer to this question based on your business goals, it’s worth taking a closer look.
If you are unreasonably offered only a custom website or a very rare and unpopular system for managing it, then you risk becoming forever “tied” to a specific developer and/or spending a large budget on keeping your web resource up to date.
We work with all the most popular engines (CMS):
- wordpress;
- OpenCart;
- Magento;
- 1C-Bitrix;
and less often with others (less popular). And also, if necessary, we develop self-written projects, for example, on the Laravel framework. We’ll tell you what exactly is right for your business, once you know the problem statement - Please!
8. Terms of reference (TOR) and contract
And last but not least, the criterion is the terms of the contract for the development of the site. Before signing a contract for the provision of web development services, a complete and clear technical specification (TOR) should be drawn up together with the contractor and approved. The correct formulation of the problem is half the solution, says popular wisdom.
Be sure to conclude an agreement - it will be a guarantee that the customer will fulfill his obligations. Read the terms of the contract carefully. Don’t rush to pay for the entire project; for example, we provide step-by-step payment.
Our studio has experience in more than 20 market niches. We work according to our own methodology for developing a unique competitive advantage (UCA) for an online business and creating an effective website in any niche. When designing websites, we use UI/UX interface design, which combines ease of use with an ideal appearance.
Do you need an effective website at the best price?
Still have questions?
