In the Philippines, choosing the right website designer to build your first website is a minefield for any business person who is not very conversant with internet, website design, search engine optimization, web development and graphics design. You have probably stumbled into other website design firm or freelance group with deals that are just not believable. An inconvenient fact is that many website design group in the country fall into this category and that too many unsuspecting entrepreneurs tag along with these website design firm wannabees unaware of the potential risks.
This section provides a 15 checklist items which I hope will warn you that you are about to choose the wrong website designer. I believe that if at least 2 to 3 of what I listed are satisfied, you might want to consider looking for another designer.
Please note that the description "website designer" may either be a freelancer, a freelance group or a website design firm.
1. It is not a registered firm.
I would estimate that 1 out of 10 website design groups being a legitimate and registered firm may still be a high assumption. The easiest way to know is to check their website's Home Page or About Us page and see if there's any mention of a company name and perhaps SEC or DTI registration number. Some have the guts to illegally use unregistered company name like My Website Firm Corp., Inc. Co., etc. I'd recommend checking it here (SEC Online) if the company or corporation is indeed registered.
2. The firm doesn't have an office address, telephone or fax number.
How can a business exist without an office address, telephone or fax number? For me, peace of mind is all important to any business owner. True, cyber mania gave us the speed of light communication through email and the internet. Huge sum of money can now transferred over fiber optic backbone. But still, even the most successful online business such as amazon, google and paypal needs to have their business done in an office environment and corporate setup. This is vital if the firm has to stay long, at least until you decide to close your business.
3. Sales, Technical and Billing contact is the same person.
It can’t possibly be that a single person can do all these things to a number of clients at the same time unless you are the first or the only client.
4. They make lots of excuses for not being able to come to your place at your given time.
Because they are either at the office employed in a day time job or they have classes as they are freelance students.
5. They don't have a website of their own, their website doesn't appear to be professionally designed or it lacks appropriate contents.
The reason being they can't afford to buy their own domain and setup their own hosting, they would simply advertise in online forums, buy n sell paper or send spam email ads using free email services such as yahoo or google. Some have websites but it's annoying that the contents are not fitted to the true nature of the business or the contents are outdated. Go to yahoo or google and search the phrase "more before the end of the year 2003" and you'll see exactly what I mean, a content published 4 years ago. And if they can't update their own website, who else will they do it for?
6. They do not approach or contact you in a professional manner.
They would call in sick or out of town when you need them. They make excuses on delays for publishing or updating your website.. They are dressed up in jerseys and nice pair of sandals when doing client visits.
7. It doesn't have strong industry tie-up and partners.
Again, the easiest way to investigate this is to visit their website, check for Partners or Affiliates page. No solid industry tie-up is almost equal to unreliability.
8. They don't support multiple platform or technology. They stick only to what they know.
They don't give you options to choose from, they are likely to insist that one and only one technology is best for you. They would say things like "plain html is good because it loads faster and can easily be indexed by search engines.." so on and so forth, in reality, that's only what they can do.
9. They can't give a warranted lifetime support.
I don't have anything against freelancers who have the skills and experience in their field. I know independent freelancers who are really great web designers, in fact I recently had the chance to work abroad with a website professional in the Telecom Industry whose works as a freelancer are first-rate.
He however felt sorry for his clients when he move abroad to work in a foreign company. Some of them don't even know his whereabouts and where to contact him when the time comes to renew their domain name or update the contents in their website.
This can be a nightmare and is a serious issue that needs to be taken with caution. Many website design group in the Philippines will build your website, take your money and then disappear. And before you even knew it, your domain has expired and has already been snatched by some domain syndicate who steals domain names of good businesses or celebreties to publish some unrelated articles or to resell the domain at an inflated price, like in the case of Kris Aquino Website, http://www.krisaquino.com or ChinaBank Website http://www.chinabank.com. Sounds not a problem? You might just think of getting a new domain name. Suddenly, you realized that your domain www.preciousbusinessdomain.com is printed in all your marketing materials - price list, product catalogues, advertisement banners, and company publications. Well, you might still be able to bid in getting it back, like in the case of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) dispute against the former satirical site, http://www.pldt.com of Gerry Kaimo which was finally resolved on a quiet settlement and after 6 years of expensive legal battle.
10. It doesn't have a clearly stated process, timeline and projection in designing and developing your website.
They will not tell you what and how they will do things, they can’t give estimate delivery timeline and they won’t tell you the step by step process in developing your website. This is mostly the case for amateurs working from a spare bedroom.
11. It is not offering other service nor it is supporting other business.
It doesn’t provide value added services such as search engine optimization, website promotion, email marketing, newsletter or email campaign, graphics design and presentation.
12. The company is not profitable.
In that case, you should hope for the best that they'll still be around when its time for you to renew your subscription or when you need to upload new price list, else, you need to start all over again.
14. Programmer, Graphics Designer, Layout Artist, Database administrator is the same person.
A person’s work and design won't measure up to the collective efforts of a graphic artist,programmer, database administrator and layout designer. Unfortunately, most freelance designer will pretend to know everything at his slightest reading. As they say, little knowledge is dangerous.
13. He doesn't appear to know what he is talking about!
Website design is a broad topic to discuss and there are thousands of professionals and organization with conflicting views on the criteria that delineates a good website from poorly designed layout and absurd content. Mind you that what I’ve mentioned here is a piece of an entirely vast topic of website development industry. We have not yet tackled search engine optimization, page ranking, W3C standardization, and many other jargons which I don’t want to baffle you about. I discussed it here just to emphasize a point that no single individual will gain a high level of understanding in all areas involved in website design. You need a team with selective knowledge and experience in all fields of website design. An ideal team I would say must be at least composed of a programmer, layout artist, graphics artist, content specialist and the most important probably is a marketing expert, after all, it is why you build your website for, to market your product and build your company's image.
15. They promise to give you the best service at the cheapest price!
This is probably the most crude, overused and misused slogan by inexperienced professional. They maybe cheap, true, quality service, I doubt.
Ferragamo shoes, Lacoste Shirt, Omega Watch, BMW Car. These brands' quality and style never failed to astonish us and yet they don’t come cheap. These products have achieved their high mark because they are made by professionals who are expert in their field and who need to make a living. They are compensated for their work which must come from the company’s revenue streams – product sales. The subject covers an entire chapter in our college economy book that falls under market forces. The subject is simple yet is too broad to discuss here and should be tackled on a marketing perspective. What I can advice you, is to look for a firm that gives you package options to fit your needs and budget, do not overprice but delivers the service as stated in the mutually signed job order and is worth the money you have paid for.
If you were able to read this before you picked one, Cheers!
