How to find a good web design company

Looking for a web design company? This article looks at how exactly you identify a good we design company from its portfolio page.

1. Presence of portfolio

It’s pretty obvious that web design company must have its own web site with a neat portfolio of its previous works. But don't be taken away by the site alone. Portfolio is like a "face" of a web design company. It tells you about what the company did and how well they did it. But this is not all.

2. Total number of works

Though this provides a lot of indications, there is no standard number that can guarantee that you’re going to deal with web design guru. It is true that 50 projects is better than 5, but quality is equally important. Check out on that. And while you do that, do remember that an average website design takes 2 to 4 weeks to be finished.

But what can this information then give you? Firstly, you can see whether the company has enough expertise. Also, it can tell you if it has a stable employee base, a well-oiled development process, and enough staff to enable round-the-clock performance, so as to ensure that when you commit your site design to the said company you can be sure that it won’t be new work for them.

3. Type of work done

Look carefully at each project in the portfolio page. How many of them are similar to the one you need? Analyse this by industry, site, technology used, and look and feel?

2-3? Good!

> 5? Excellent!!

None? There could be reasons for this too – such as the owner not wanting publish it, or web site not being live anymore - so if the company has passed all these tests, you must then ask the company if they have ever done the task that you now need.

4. Quality

Look at all the sites the company has designed/developed. See how long it takes for the home page to load

A few seconds? Fine, the web designer knows how to optimize images.
A few minutes? This is okay for a Flash site since the whole site is loaded at once in case of Flash and can also take longer because of sound and visual effects.

But if a simple HTML web site takes more than 2-3 minutes to load you know something’s wrong. Check other HTML sites from the portfolio - if they too take ages to load, it's better you search for another web development company.

The evolution of SaaS

Saas or Software-as-a-service is a service distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the internet. Now, the obvious question is how is it different from other models? For this, we first need to know what those models are, and compare them with SaaS.

IaaS

Infrastructure as a service is a model where service providers offer pools of abstract IT infrastructure resources like servers, storage, and network components to customers on a pay-per-usage model. The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible for housing, cooling, operation, and maintenance.

PaaS

Platform as a service is a model where service providers provision fully-functioning computing and solution stacks on which applications are deployed. The provider provides the networks, servers, storage for the environment, as well as manages varying levels of scalability and maintenance.

In IaaS, the client typically pays on a per-use basis. In PaaS, the client typically pays for the services used. Seen from the point of view of value visibility to end users, IaaS serves network architects and application developers, PaaS serves application developers, while SaaS reaches the end users.

Evolution of SaaS

As companies looked to reduce costs, Application service providers offered businesses the service of hosting and managing specialized business applications with the goal of reducing costs through central administration and the solution provider’s specialization in a particular business application.

Software-as-a-service essentially extends the idea of the ASP model. The term Software-as-a-service (SaaS) however, is more commonly used in specific settings. Most early application service providers focussed on managing and hosting third-party independent software vendors’ software. As of now, SaaS vendors typically develop and manage their own software.

Now, it’s important to know that they require only an internet vendor to use. Initial application service providers offered more traditional client-server applications requiring installation of software on users’ personal computers. Contemporary Software-as-a-service relies predominantly on the web and only requires an internet browser to use.