In earlier days, the website was treated as a mere identity and those days are gone. Your potential customer needs information about your business to start interacting with you. Your competition is growing drastically, and having a proper website can help you outrank your competitors in some cases. Many users have chosen the wrong web designing company and got their fingers burnt. Due to the emergence of freelancers and small companies, the average cost of web designing drastically came down. These people are offering services from INR 3000 ($50) to INR 5000 ($70) without knowing about Cyber Security, Scalability, GST, and other factors like Intellectual Property etc. If your website designing company quotes you less than $200 then make sure they exist for next year or not. I’m not only talking about the continuous support feasibility, there are several risks associated with their business. In this article, I’m going to cover the importance of choosing a proper web designing company and how to find an ethical website designing company near you.
Overview of this article
- Importance of Choosing a Proper Web Designing Company
- Losing access to your website domain
- Risk with Business Email
- Risk with Intellectual Property
- The risk with Web Security
- Privilege to Self-Manage Your Website
- How to Find an Ethical Website Designing Company?
Importance of Choosing a Proper Web Designing Company
Choosing the right website designing company is super important. You are on the right track if you compare them based on their skills and not on cost. As I said before, when you associate with a freelancer or a company which does not have 360-degree skillsets, then you’re in serious trouble.
Losing Access to your website domain
If you hire a freelancer or a smaller web-designing company which does not have a vision to solve people’s problems will most probably go out of business in a year or two. So if your web designer has access to your domain, then you are about to lose control over your domain as you will not know where to renew it. If you are determined to choose web designers based on cost, then at least book a domain by yourself so that in the worst case, you still have the hold of your domain. Having control over the domain alone is not sufficient as there are other factors to consider like Hosting, SSL and Email.
Risk with Business Email
How many of you have asked about business email to your web designing agency? If your web designing company offers you a free business email powered by webmail then your privacy is at risk. Do you know your emails can be read by your web designer? If you are using a free webmail powered by your web hosting control panel then your website designing company can send/receive your business email on your behalf. Nothing in this world is free and if someone offering for free stay away from them as it costs your privacy. Let us say you are trusting your web designer and you’re confident that they don’t read your inbox. Still, you are not safe. These emails are stored on the same server where your website is hosted. When there is a vulnerability, your emails could be read by hackers. So say goodbye to the luring offers you get from web designing companies who offer Open Source Webmail Solutions. Always go for Free or Premium Cloud Email Solutions as you get better Security, User Interface and Privacy. Our recommendation is to get Google Workspace or Microsoft Teams or Zoho Email. Eg: Zoho offers cloud email free for 5 users up to 5 GB each user. Choosing Free Zoho business email is a thousand times better than using an open-source web email that offers zero privacy and security.
Risk with Intellectual Property
Have you asked whether the website designing company has purchased the license for the images and videos your company name? If the images/videos used on your website are downloaded under a free license, then you should credit the author using a backlink, if not then still you are violating the copyright. If your website designing company uses unauthorised images/videos then be ready to get a copyright infringement notice against your company from the creator of the image/video. Your business has to pay the penalty for unauthorised usage of image/video assets. Click here to download and see how the license file will be for the image used below. Make sure you are getting such a licence provided by your web designing company. Ask whether they will provide a license file like this. If not you should not choose them.
The risk with Web Security
80-90% of Freelancers and Smaller Web Designing Companies will offer zero security. They aren’t offering because you are paying low. The fact is they aren’t aware of advanced web security. As they aren’t technically strong, they are offering services for such a low price. When you associate with a company that offers Website Security as a service then you shall have peace of mind as they offer a warranty for their work.
Mostly, your web designer could use the Nulled version of web templates. Because the templates themselves can cost you $20-$100. Mostly any premium content that is downloadable for free on the internet carries security vulnerability to it. So your website could be attacked by a virus or malware soon.
Secondly, you should host your website on a secure server which has a WAF (Web Application Firewall). Also, make sure your website can resist DDoS attacks. It is good to check with your website designer about Website Security Features before signing a contract with them.
Privilege to Self-Manage Your Website
If you opt for a dynamic website and get access to the CMS control panel with a proper tutorial document you will be able to manage your website independently. Not only CMS, but you should also have access to the domain control panel. This gives you the freedom to switch providers in case you’re losing their support. If you miss getting the domain control panel and if your web designer disappears next year, you will lose access to your business domain. Again you need to search for a new provider and redesign a new website.
How to Find an Ethical Website Designing Company?
Finding a good web designing company near you is a challenging task as there are many providers. Few companies do in-house and many outsource to freelancers. Asking questions is the only way to find the right web designing company. To help you ask questions, we have created a document. You can click here to download the questions you should ask even though you aren’t a technical person. Also, please follow the below points to find the right web designers near you.
- Ask for an online/direct meeting to discuss your scope in detail. Don’t rush the web designer to give a price without discussing your full requirements. Avoid the web designers if they are rushing about cost without allowing you to explain your requirement
- Ask whether they offer you a GST invoice. Get their GST number and check GST Filing status on the official GST website. Unorganised businesses/freelancers will not have GST certificate. This is a good signal to choose an ethical web designing company near you
- Ask when they started their company and verify their existence using WhoIS data from this www.whois.com/whois/theirwebsitedomain
- If someone offers a fixed cost, then check what are the inclusives and exclusives. In general, I don’t think fixed-cost web designing plans work.
- Ask them to give a detailed proposal mentioning the website sitemap and inner sections so that you don’t have to pay extra for every small change/addition. Sign the proposal only after reading the detailed user flow.
- Ask them whether they give you the license for the website template and the graphic asset. If they say no, never choose them as you will have to face huge consequences in future related to copyright and IP.
- If your intent is to get a premium website, then ask them whether they do UI design and write code from scratch. If they say no to UI, then they are not a premium web designing company.
About the Author:
K.P. Alagu Rajeshwaran, the CEO of Hyrrokkin Branding Services Private Limited, is a passionate entrepreneur with 10+ years of successful experience in Digital Marketing and Sales. He is the proud Co-Founder of SaaS Products like Hykko and Gleeca. He leads the team of Hyrrokkians and the journey started in the year 2018 by establishing our first office in Coimbatore. Now Hyrrokkin has branches in Kolkata and Chennai. Alagu Rajeshwaran also offers strategic consultations to help companies grow their business. He can be reached at [email protected]
Also, read the risks of choosing a cheap web designing company.
