Tips For Choosing A Website Developer And Hosting Company

There's a lot to do before website launch day, and one of the most important parts of that is ensuring that your website looks right. Most people hire a professional website designer to do this for them; website design is a tricky skill that takes a long time to learn, and if you want your site to look good you're really going to need to contact a professional. This article hopes to demystify that process for you a little and help you to make the decision a bit more easily.

How To Choose A Website Developer

Different website designers have different purviews. Some simply deal with the nuts and bolts of the website, and leave you to do all the images and colours and 'decoration'; some will deal with all your graphic design as well as your coding; others offer a full package including copywriting and SEO to boot. While you're making a decision, here are some of the things to look at in particular.

  • You'll need some reassurance that your web developer understands what you're trying to do with your site - what its objective is, what its target audience is, and what kinds of functionality you're going to need it to have. This means that you need them to be in touch with you, whether through Skype or IM or email or a phone call or anything else.
  • Never hire a developer before you've seen their portfolio. This doesn't have to be sites they've been paid to make - using someone who is just starting out can be a great thing to do - but it should be sites they've built, even if they're just examples or for themselves.
  • If you're going with someone who claims to be experienced in the field, ask them for some references and have a chat with the people they put you in touch with about what they're like to work with and how well they felt the project went.
  • SEO is not as important as people often think it is in the way that they seem to think of it - it actually works a little differently than you'll usually here, and there's a lot of nonsense about it out there. You need a web developer who knows this, and who doesn't worry about filling things with keywords or using H1 headers or other 'tricks' that make no difference.

How To Choose A Hosting Company For Your Website

Once you've picked a developer, you're going to need somewhere to put the website once it's been built - and that can be a pretty major task in and of itself. So what are you looking for in a website hosting provider?

  • You'll lose visitors and potentially money every time your page goes down, so you need to make sure you're using a host that can claim to have at least 99.5% server uptime. 100% is impossible, but you should try to get as close as you can.
  • It will get very expensive very quickly if you don't buy enough bandwidth (sometimes known as a 'data transfer limit') - either that or your site will be taken down entirely once you run out. Be realistic about your bandwidth requirements and make absolutely sure that you get enough. Do not, however, fall for promises of 'unlimited' bandwidth - that's a physical impossibility, and usually indicates a rip-off or scam.
  • Make sure you're buying enough disk space, particularly if you intend to host audio or video on your website. Again, 'unlimited data' is pretty much impossible - you should be at least a little wary of any company that tries to offer it to you.
  • Finally, make sure you're using a host with a reputation for providing good technical and customer support. You're bound to need it at some point, and it can make a huge difference.