A strong online business plan can still fail due to isues with website design and/or website hosting. When thinking about which web design company to pick out, get out your pen and play ‘web development bingo’ – we propose a ‘full card’ to be website design outfits that at least briefly talk about the following points when discussing your proposed new website:-

• YOUR idea – talking in detail in terms of what your intentions are – what is the web design company’s impression of your plan ?
• ease-of-use – so visitors are able to carry out all tasks without thinking on your website
• accessibility issues – so your website can be accessed by all, with the text understood by the market the website is aimed at
• SEO (or search engine optimisation) – supplying your site great search engine rankings
• CMS (content mangement systems) – allowing you to add/amend/delete content on the site by yourself at any time
• website security – safety of private data, and regular backups of data.
• hosting – will the web development company host the website? How about their servers? Do they use shared servers with 100s of other websites on the same server, or do they have their own servers?
• technical support and after-sales – will they assist your business after the site goes live? If so, how much is tech support? Do they offer site updates?

A decent website development firm will inform you of the above-mentioned matters, and how they tackle them.

So how to discover such a web design firm? It’s wise to get one in your location, permitting you to visit them and be assured that they are also a bricks and mortar firm with a great workforce behind them. In Google, use a search term like “website development” plus your area; for instance : web design leicester. This will give you a list of web development companies in your area.