So, you want to start a web design company in the UK?
by: Ralph Ramah
A friend of mine is learning, the hard way, that starting a web design company is not as easy and straight forward as we make it seem. The web design industry is very competitive. Delivering top quality, accessible, search engine friendly web designs at affordable prices will give you an edge over your web design competitors, but it is only half the battle. Coping with web design customers, especially if they are very picky is the other half of the battle. Unless you can cope with these two battles, the likelihood is you will give up on web design and do something else for a living. Still, if you are determined to battle on, here are a few commercial advice that worked for our web design company. We’ll look at a number of key success factors in other articles in this web design series. Let’s look at the web designers you are looking for.
If you are serious about starting a sustainable web design company, get some talented and resilient people on your team first. Young people seem to cope better with an emerging web design business. You need web designers who are good at design, coding and ready to learn new web design techniques all the time. The web design industry is booming and changing all the time. Your web designers need to keep up with the latest techniques and web design trends. They need to make time to do personal reading and soak up fresh web design ideas and be innovative in developing new web design products and services.
Although it is rare to find the two set of skill, design and coding, in one individual, do not despair, it is possible to find the gem if you search well. So spent some time looking for the good web designer, don’t just hire anybody on the cheap. This is a knowledge based and skill based industry, so start with two or three good web design specialists who know their web design stuff. We are talking a minimum of artistic abilities and talent. Ask them for some previous work and get a feel for their web design style. If you are offering bespoke web design you need people with flexibility and able to adapt and change their web design style to suit the need and taste of your web design customers.
If you are lucky you will find someone who is both talented and who is good at coding. Start with someone who is good at php, an open source web design programming language which is becoming very popular. You will also find plenty of technical help online. If you cannot find a web designer who is a coder, you obviously need a web designer and a coder. Make sure they can work seamlessly with each other and communicate well, they will be doing lots of that while developing web designs for your web design company. Team spirit is key, especially is you have just set up your web design company.
Find web designers who are emotionally resilient, flexible and able to work odd hours. No matter how good the web design contract you signed with your customers, they will expect lots of web design changes in the course of the project and somebody will have to do and redo these web design changes, sometimes over and over again tirelessly. There are times when your web designer will do a brilliant web design which is turned down by your customer. People have different tastes and ideas. Don’t take it personally if a customer turn down a brilliant design, it happens all the time. Can your web designer take it? If he wants to progress in your new web design company he will have to put up with a lot and plough on with a flexible attitude.
As far as you can, do not get them involved in the commercial issues and disputes with customers. Do let them know what is going on but they have enough on their hands with the web design and they need every bit of creative energy and peace of mind to concentrate on the web design and coding. Try and handle the customer issues and disputes yourself, that’s your job.
Where am I going to find these web designers? If you can afford it, advertise online and interview locally. Otherwise there is a great big pool of talented young web design experts out there willing to work and make a good living. Try posting your ads on international forums and don’t be afraid to chat with web designers overseas. Perseverance will get you somewhere and getting the right web design team together is one of the keys to setting up a solid web design company.
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About The Author
Ralph Ramah is owner of a Web Design company in the UK. He is the author of a number of web design articles and has helped several companies setting up web sites and successful web design services. He can be contacted through
http://www.discountwebdesign.co.uk.
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