The way to tell if the web design firm is a legitimate company is very simple. You simple have to check out the information provided by the company. Search for the company name to see if it is actually registered and if the owner goes by the name that has been stated. Next you should check out the companies address and telephone numbers. These will also be registered to the company and most scammers will not have a registered business address.

These online scams work with people pretending to be business owners when they are not. They provide all of the information you would expect a registered web design firm to hold but as soon as you pay them for part of or your entire contract they take off and you never see your money again. Remember to be very careful when choosing to buy a service off of anybody on the internet.

Website Development

If the web design firm is developing the website from scratch hours of extra work will be needed, increasing the cost significantly.

Planning

Most contracts include planning charges including meetings to allow you to see the progress. This means the designers do not just jump into the design and a lot of thought goes into it beforehand.

Tools / Server Rent

Some web design firms will charge you for the tools they use, as in some cases these can be quite expensive (particularly design applications can cost up to and above $1000). Server rent will be for renting server space while the website is stuck in the firms test environment before the full release.

Hosting

It is common for website design firms to offer full hosting packages as part of a deal. If the firm you choose does not then you will have to find a host elsewhere to host your website.

Maintenance

Maintenance and upgrade charges are applied if your website goes down and needs repairing or you need any big changes making to your website.

One thing you will notice is that if you find a web design firm offering both custom built websites and CMS web design, the CMS web design will tend to be cheaper. Content Management Systems are a group of software which is essentially the entire backend of a website. This means the web design firm can focus on the actual look of the website instead of the backend functionality. CMS such as WordPress are very easy to use and easy to manage, in fact in most cases a member of staff at the company can be trained to do maintenance and updates without any extra costs.

Due to the reasons above CMS web design usually is the cheaper option, and is definitely the right choice for anyone looking to have a website designed on a tight budget.

The current economy has not only affected the end consumer, corporate businesses are struggling to make ends meet and for this reason a lot of business owners have made to jump onto the internet with eCommerce websites. These websites allow them to trade entirely online and introduce their product or service to millions of new and unique potential leads.

For this reason the eCommerce website design industry has exploded. Various web design firms offer various services at various prices and it was once hard to compare these prices to what you actually receive. Price Comparison websites have made this whole task easier by giving you an automated system allowing you to take a website design firm and compare it with some of its main competitors, to ensure you get the best price when designing your website.

Like with most industries, in the web design world you get what you pay for. The best website designers always cost a little more because they are worth it and although most are open to negotiation there is often little you can do about it.

Deciding how much you should pay for your website designer will really depend on your budget. In theory a budget will be drawn up before you even start looking so you should have a rough figure in mind. Other notes to take when you find the website designer is if they are able to offer website maintenance and possibly hosting with their service. This is the area in which the cheaper firms make their money as they do not include maintenance in the initial costs.

This is why you must have a good conversation with a representative of the firm before you sign any agreements or hand over any money. The truth is that some firms do not include some of the charges in with the initial price and this is where they make money from you at a later date. A firm offering complete website design and maintenance may ask for $400 but at least you know any maintenance you want in the future is free of other charge. Other firms will have an initial price of $100 and charge you a $50 fee every time you want something on the website changing. Be sure to check out the contract carefully and ask about any fees that might later apply to your website.

1. Think about how you want your layout to be and sketch it out in front of you.
2. Add notes to your sketch about the functionality of the website and what division is the navigation bar etc.
3. Sketch a good idea of what you want your banner / logo to look like and how it will fit it with the back end of the design.
4. Use your sketches and own colour theme to build a draft website without ever looking at a competitor’s site, allowing you to know the design is completely custom.
5. Modify your website as needed after the first draft.

The first place you should look if you want value for money is online freelance websites. Sites such as oDesk allow you to post job listing to thousands of self-employed free lancers from all over the world. The good thing about this is you can ask them for portfolios or sample work before you hire.

When you hire over freelance websites the site itself does charge a fee but this is often a small percentage of the final pay amount. If you do not like paying extra to the middle man there are plenty of directories listing hundreds of WordPress developers. These are often full with people seeking jobs in the WordPress area and you can even find people who are more local to you in the real world. Either way you should be well on your way to finding yourself a great WordPress developer.

The only problem with the popularity of WordPress is that it has made it the tool for hackers to manipulate. Thousands of hackers have taken it upon themselves to find back doors into the WordPress system allowing them to take over entire WordPress sites. This allows them to completely delete the WordPress website or simply change the monetization techniques that have been implemented to better themselves.

When you hire a WordPress developer you should make sure they are good with handling the WordPress system and the advanced security techniques which can be implemented. As they will be developing and possibly maintaining your website in the long run they should know that WordPress often release new versions that battle minor security flaws in the system, so the website should always be kept 100% up to date.

Now being a WordPress developer does not only require you to have good graphics skills for the actual design, you will also need some sort of PHP programming skills to enable you to make the website function as your client wants it. There is already a lot of plugins available for WordPress however some will still want things changing or customizing to be unique to them. For this reason it is very important that a WordPress developer knows and can use PHP programming.

If you are currently non fluent with PHP there are plenty of tutorials available on the internet, including full web systems that you can build to really maximize your training experience.