Choosing A Design Firm

1. Survey the web design agency's website. If it doesn't look appealing and highly-professional, it's very doubtful that yours will when they design it.
   
   
2. Ask them how long have they been in business. Look for companies that have been in business for at least 2 years.
   
   
3. Take a thorough look at their portfolio. Are the designs consistently professional? Does the portfolio show diversity?
   
   
4. What company model is it? We don't recommend a designer still in high school, because of the lack of industry experience and knowledge. On the other hand, we also don't recommend design firms with a full-time staff. A firm with a full-time staff will typically charge 10 times or more than that of the firms that use contractors instead.
   
   Which brings us to the type we do recommend. That is, design firms that only hire developers for short-term work on a project. With firms that use contractors, you typically are only paying for the work performed.
   
   
5. Can they provide references? A good design firm should be able to give you a fair amount of client references.
   
   
6. How is their client list? Do they have a decent number of clients? Are some of the clients well-known?
   
   
7. Personality. How well do your e-mail or phone communications go with the design firm? Whether they are easy-going and friendly, or hurried and pushy. Take in mind that you will be communicating with them a lot, so it's good to find a company that gels with your personality.
   
   
8. High-pressure? This can be a personal preference, but I don't care much for high-pressure sales tactics. If you are getting pressured into making a decision, I would recommend taking that as a warning sign.
   
   
9. Response time. Some design firms have a lighting-fast response time for not only new business inquiries, but also urgent fixes. We all get busy and buried in work sometimes, but look for a consistently fast response time. Namely, a response the same day or better, instead of waiting two weeks for a response every time.
   
   
10. Ask questions. When in doubt ask questions. Try to weed out the important, from the unimportant. The true from the false. We feel that all big decisions are worth researching first.
    

We ARE a design firm, so you might consider us biased. But, we have built our business on the premise that we prefer to treat our clients, the same way we want to be treated when we are a customer.