So, you’re ready to redesign, redevelop, or facelift your company’s web site. As the web continues to expand, the web design companies multiply. With so many choices, it’s difficult for many small businesses (especially those with no internal  marketing, IT, or web support) to figure out which company is best. There’s a few things to keep in mind when looking at a Web Design Company (or Web Designer):

1. Experienced Portfolio. Like they always say,”A picture is worth a thousand words,” it’s best to see a web design company’s sites in action, live, on the web. You want to look at composition, design, organization, page structure, simplicity, navigation, and intuitiveness. If you get to a site, and you’re confused on what the company does, or how to get to an assumable page, then the site is designed poorly. Now and then, companies will splatter every site they’ve ever created within their portfolio, which is great, in order to get a wide understanding of their capabilities. Occasionally, some companies, will only list a few of their sites either to strategically show their best-of-the-best work, or because that’s all they have. Contact the company and request the whole lot.

2. Creative Simplicity. Some web design companies like to tout themselves as “top notch creative web companies,” but lack tremendous knowledge and skills on how to actually create a decent looking site that is simple and compelling. For example, this web design company’s web site, http://www.lightburndesigns.com/, has a clean, engaging, and simple approach, creating an easy user experience. It’s very intuitive on what services they offer, and it’s given in small doses, which is easy for a first-time visiter to digest. On the other hand, for example, this web design company’s web site, http://www.inet-web.com/,believes that the best web experience is to smear a bunch of animated .gifs and screaming video backgrounds to get your attention. Too many messages and too many places to look on a single page can cause a user to feel confused. Secondly, on this same site, there’s an untitled scroll box crammed with random content including a strange video and then career links. There’s an obvious lack of organization and structure here. If a page needs to hide content in a scroll box, most likely it should probably exist on another page or two. Hiding content in a scroll box can also be an annoying experience, especially for iPad/tablet users. Lesson learned, if you can’t understand a web design company’s own web site, it’s most likely that they are going to design your site in the same fashion.

3. Meaningful Design. A web design company may create something pretty, but is it relevant. A well designed web site will be designed to fit a company’s brand and appeal to the company’s audience. For example, this company is a building materials supplier, http://www.abcsupply.com/. The site easily reflects the brand given by the logo colors and is consistent throughout. The site is also very simply designed with a easy navigation that will make it especially useful for a wide array of users. On the other hand, some sites, especially those that are thrown together using a template, usually don’t have a meaningful design. For example, http://www.strobeldentistry.com/, is great example. If you happened to not see their logo in the right corner, you’d believe it was a site for an architecture firm or for chicago tourism, and not a Dentist. The meaning of your business should be clearly driven on a web site, especially on the homepage.

Keep in mind, there’s other factors like site performances, site flexibity across different devices (mobile, ipad, etc.), and server-sided dynamic language choices that can also persuade your decision. Overall, assessing the Web Design company’s own site, and their portfolio, should get your more comfortable when choosing a web design company. Good luck.