Need a full web design TEAM.
-
I'm an SEO manager for a company in Los Angeles. You can see our website here: https://opiates.com. I've been at the company for about 3 months, and in that time we've almost had our website re-done twice. It is badly in need of an overhaul in terms of design and navigation, but at the same time we can't afford to lose the organic traffic that we currently have.
Does anyone have recommendations for web development firms that can take on a BIG project and work with me to preserve the SE traffic that we currently have?
Thanks
-
Thanks Robert,
I definitely feel that the process is the most important thing. Also, generally companies who have a process are on top of a lot of other things. I appreciate the response.
Jesse
-
Jesse, I think Ray-pp does you a great service in pointing you to Moz recommended companies because obviously there are a lot of people who will immediately reach out to you as the result of this question. I am going to go an entirely different track for you and I will point to a firm that is not mine and explain why they would be a good choice. I also want to ask that you quit looking for a recommendation and start looking at what companies do.
Everyday, we talk with clients and potential clients about web development. Almost all have a story about the website that took a year or more to build or was never really completed. You have to quit looking at the companies that fail and ask yourself, "Why are they failing?" Those companies that fail will tell you it is because YOU did not get them the content. (Just think about that, "If it weren't for client's, they could be great at business!!")
You not getting them content is so much BS. It would have to be an extremely rare occurrence for content purely to halt the completion of a web dev project. The reason a project (for you, building a new or replacement site) does not go on schedule is because the company doing the project does not have a process for their dev team. Or, if they do have a process, they do not follow it. Understand if you call or walk in and ask, "Do you guys have a process?" they will all say yes. Ask simply, how do you go about building the site for me? How long will it take? Then wait for them to show you a process. Failure to show a process means: They do not have one.
When I started in SEO I never intended to go into web development or integrated marketing. Our company got into web dev out of self defense: I got tired of fighting "webmasters" or overlords over territory when trying to take care of someone's SEO. So, before I started hiring web developers I went to Distilled's website because I respected them, I respected things Will Critchlow had written - because they made sense, etc. I wanted to see what they did given they had to have experienced the same issues I was about to face. As a former critical care RN, I was sold on them. Because they had PROCESS. PROCESS. PROCESS. If a firm has a solid process, they will get the job completed on time. BUT - and this is a big BUT: They will be on you to produce as much as they are on one another. I got it from them, I have used it, and what Distilled does works.
I would ask anyone I was considering engaging a few questions: (First, call the company do not email. Call during business hours. Does a human being get to the phone to talk with you? If so you may ask these questions of them. If no human speaks to you during business hours, IMO they are not interested in your business right now. Sorry if that offends someone.)
- Is your development team in-house or do you outsource? IMO - you cannot have the quality control with outside developers that you can when they are integral to the team that includes SEO's, PPC pros, copywriters, other marketing pros, Local experts, etc. That is a strong IMO. You must have an in house dev or dev team.
- Do you have clocks? Yes, I am serious. A firm that is not tracking where every project is (projects on the clock) doesn't know when there is a failure. We are all going to have failures (including Distilled), the great company is going to know of it before the client does and they are going to practice something else I learned here from the Moz team - TAGFEE. In other words if they have a failure, they will report it to you before you discover it and they will have a plan of action to correct it and keep it from happening again in the future.
- Are you active on any forums and if so, which? How active is active? - In other words are they learning every single day? EVERY DAY? If their team members are not on Webmaster World, Moz, SearchEngineLand, Linda Buquet's Local forum, etc. and ad infinitum, then they are not going to be up to date. That will cause failures and my guess is... they will not know it.
- Who will run the project? (This is a trick question; do not tell others about it please!) - if they say you, I would take a pass. You are not a web development expert; why in the hell would they want you to run the project? why would you want to? You want input at every step (Distilled can show you a great input process at every step); they should want your approval at every step (I guarantee you Distilled will want your approval or they are going to let you know that your project is in some way sidelined). And that wanting your input and that wanting your approval will be the reason the project is done on time. Trust me please on this. When you get a sitemap or wire frame and you do not give approval, you are going to get an email that says, essentially, that your project is not moving forward until you either give approval or submit changes. If you submit changes, they will then ask again for approvals of their new sitemap, wireframe, comp, copy, etc.
So, that is what it should look like and that is a better answer for you than anyone telling you who can. Yes, I still believe that Distilled is a great choice, but now you can go out wherever and ask the questions that will allow you to choose even with no recommendation. Make sure you are all over them about process. Make sure there will be someone who you are going to be talking with all the time who is managing your project - ten people cannot manage a project.
I have to add this last part. IMO if you are wanting someone to beat a price or give you a lowball estimate, etc. that company that wins won't get it done for you. A good developer(s) costs money. You cannot build cheap great websites.
I hope this helps you out,
Robert
-
I'm guessing the appropriate answer here it to direct you to the Moz recommended companies for such projects.
That can be found here: http://moz.com/community/recommended
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Reducing Amount of Text on Web Pages-Risk of Killing Ranking?
We are a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Manhattan. Our site (w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . com) is text heavy and somewhat uninviting. Ranking is fair. Conversions awful. Our niche is very competitive. We plan on reducing the amount of text and making the site more visual. Among the planned changes: -Reduce amount of text in home page and text heavy pages. More emphasis on product (listings)
Branding | | Kingalan1
-Much larger photos for listings
-Lighter cleaner design with more open white areas
-Use of more visible fonts
-Better forms New design will be like: http://www.dernieretage-paris.com/ Theme and graphics based on Manhattan. More visuals. Better photos. Less text. But are we shooting ourselves in the foot by reducing text? Is there a risk that Google will reduce our ranking? Can we compensate for reduced text that is visible to visitors by completing meta tags more fully? Any thoughts??? Thanks,
Alan0 -
The brand drop down doesn't seem to be appearing for any brands in google.com.hk. Is it something which needs to be set up and registered, or automatically rolled out by Google?
In google.com.hk SERPs the brand drop down doesn't seem to be appearing for any brands. Is it something which needs to be set up and registered, or automatically rolled out by Google? And if so is Google just slow rolling out in this part of the world? Thanks
Branding | | seanfhutchinson0 -
PR Web Press Release for Links
I was wondering if submitting press release, such as to PR Web, if the links, on the press release linking back to our site still have any value in today's SEO world? If so, what is the right way to take out the most value of a Press Release.?? Please advise, Morris
Branding | | PrintEZ0 -
Sites we can submit web design news to...
Hey Mozzers - happy 2013 to one and all, I hope everyone had a great festive season! Now we're all back into the swing of things, we're in the process of getting our new website up and running. We're a web and graphic design agency, and I'm putting together checklists to ensure we get new projects some coverage where deserved. There will be a different checklist for the different disciplines - brand design, packaging, web design and so on. For many of these disciplines, there are multiple news sites that we can reach out to when we have relevant stories - Dieline for packaging, for example. But for web design, any searches I do either show up CSS Galleries / portfolios (which I already have on the checklist under another section) or web tutorial sites. I don't seem to be able to find decent, trustworthy sites that exclusively feature web news. I'm sure they exist and it's just a case of 'can't see for looking', but does anyone know of decent sites that carry news stories about new websites going live? Obviously we know not every new site will be newsworthy - and indeed we wouldn't try to submit every new site we have go live for that very reason - but it would be good to have a clutch of high authority, well visited sites to turn to when we do have something of note. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks Mozzers!
Branding | | themegroup0 -
Do you think my simple design website reflects my product better or worse?
Its been suggested my holiday cottage letting website maybe could do with a professional polish up and maybe restructure and navigation and if it would improve bookings I wouldn't hesitate. My only thought pattern is that this particular website is certainly not high-tech (this website was designed by me in Dreamweaver) I have a great guy working for me which is much better web design than me and technically more capable of producing a professional standard website, but with this new sideline I'm presently a small home-based company currently only letting eight old cottages. My thinking was keep the website simple, personal and homely for the moment. http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ The website tends to be competing against large agencies which have often hundreds of properties on their books and you have to go through their filtering system to find the small number of properties that might be of interest. I can see that if I was selling large quantities of electrical equipment or something similar you just in a very polished well-designed website. The feedback I get from customers is that like the website and they like to know they can get hold of the person behind it. Which direction would you go? polished professional company styled WordPress website or simple design website with lots of pictures and descriptions. If I ever hit the big time and have hundreds of cottages I would have to join the design and more complicated navigation of the other agencies websites but whilst I’m small maybe not? Thanks for reading Alan
Branding | | whitbycottages0 -
Web Strategy Conundrum
I run a business that offers eco friendly screen printing. Let's call it ECO SHIRT SHOP. We offer a specialized type of printing thru the website, then contract to printers throughout the US to execute the printing. (They each have their own distinct print businesses that they operate as well.) As of now we only divulge that we have print facilities in places like chicago, seattle, etc. but do not display addresses as we do not want to confuse customers. By not displaying these addresses, I feel we are missing huge opportunities to be listed by services like Yelp, Google places, etc - consequentially losing highly convertible geography specific search traffic. Ques: The print shops are open to us displaying facility address info, even somehow saying that Print Shop X prints for the ECO SHIRT SHOP network. I want to be transparent with customers and get more localized traffic, but don't want to confuse operations or give away business. For all you strategy guru's out there, how would you handle this? I am at a cross roads, and how we move forward is hugely important for the future of our business. Thanks, as always for your thoughts on this.
Branding | | peteandmikey0 -
E-commerce web design recommendation
Hey guys, have a business partner prepping a new website and it is ready to go. He wants to do something similar to threadless.com which gives users the ability to upload things, vote on things and buy things. He asked me who could build the site and I frankly didn't have any recommendations for him. Does anyone here have a positive experience with a web design/programming person or company that they trust? I would like to get a good recommendation to him of someone who can build this thing, built it well and build it in less than the usual 6-12 months. Does anyone like that even exist? If so, please respond with your answer, looking to get moving on this project soon. Thanks!
Branding | | DanDeceuster0 -
Mobile Web Apps
Our newspaper website has an extensive readership in the US, UK, Australia and UAE. Should we go for a mobile web app? Is that worth the investment considering the fact that you have to design different apps for different devices. Or does a mobile version of the website work fine? Also, are there any specific guidelines that you shoudl follow when designing web apps with regards to SEO? Also, if you could point out some good resources for getting web apps designed, that would be great! Thanks, Rishad.
Branding | | RishadShaikh590