Choosing A Website Developer

Choosing A Local Web Developer Is Always Better

Choosing a web developer is tricky, as there are so many in the UK.

Do you choose a freelancer web developer or an agency?

All web developers work with different web platforms, but not all.

WordPress is the most common website platform that businesses around the world use, but not all web developers work with WordPress.

You have a website, but you need some changes to be made.

Additional web content to be added, some new features and pages to be designed.  

You need to speak to a ‘web developer’ (rather than a designer) to handle this. However choosing a website development agency is not so easy.

The problem is, a web designer would not really be the best one to do this, as they just do design and layout.  

You need a web development company to ‘develop’ the website for you.  This would involve ”building’  on the foundation that is already there and expanding/improving the website for you.

Web developers work ‘under the hood’ so to speak, mainly doing coding changes so that forms send correctly, buttons press correctly, or making websites behave in a specific way.

As technology marches on, the complexity of websites increases.

Compare web development prices from local experts by filling in the form.

Who To Choose?

There are thousands of web development companies around the UK. How do you choose the right one to work with?

• Do you work with a freelancer?
• Do you work with an established agency?
• Do you work with a recommendation?
• What about experience?
• What about visiting them?
• What about cost?

These are normally the questions that spring to mind when considering website development. 

Lost of important factors and not just a case of picking someone at random.

When choosing a web developer you should not just go onto google and type in ‘website developer’ and go to the first result.

A First Step Roadmap

In choosing a web developer, this is a roadmap of what you need to do in a kind of step by step process:

• Outline your objectives
• Set a budget that is affordable
• Talk to a few different web developers (freelancers and agencies)
• Shortlist which web developers stand out
• Conduct interviews either via phone, Zoom or in person
• Narrow down which developers know their trade
• Select the web developer to work with

This may sound like a logical and simple process but the difficulty is finding which web developers to select.

Type web development into Google and you will get 10 on page 1, with different agencies & freelancers each day advertising.  Depending on where you are based in the UK the search results will vary.

Recommendations

Many companies will ask friends, family members or other companies for a recommendation on which web development agency to use.

This is a great option, and can give you comfort in knowing that if they have done a good job for someone else, then they may do a good job for you.  

But is your business the same as theirs?  
Is your business in the same market?
Does your website function in the same way?

Freelancer or Agency

There are positives and negatives for using an agency or freelancer.  It has to be down to the amount of work involved. 

If you have a smaller website, then a freelancer is good.  

If you have a massive website (like Amazon.com) then an established web development agency (with more resources) may be more suited.

Choosing a website developer is not easy, as there are thousands around the UK.  We are here to help you get quotes from a few local web developers that can work on your current web platform (be it WordPress, Joomla etc.).

Industry Experience

Knowledge is power, so certainly for a developer to understand your industry will bring advantages. 

However, the website developer will be putting together the nuts and bolts part of a site (making sure the payment gateway works, the links, the newsfeed etc.) so knowing the product is not as important as technical ability.

How experienced in web development and coding are they?  Have they just started or have they been doing web development for the last 15 years?

Is A Visit Needed?

With web development, the personal contact is good, but not essential.  A website developers job is to update coding, tweak code, change the content of the website. 

A visit should give you a feel for their agency.  Are the claims they make on their website true?  Are they a freelancer that works from home?

They have a marketing function, but are more of an engineer than a marketeer.  Their job is to ensure that a website runs properly, buttons work, pages load and payments go through.

If you need help in choosing a website developer to help your business, just fill in the form opposite.

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