Who is the best website designer in Kent?

Finding the right website designer in Kent for your business can be a daunting task, your search may not reveal the best website designer for your business either, so who is the best website designer in Kent?

Here are some check points that will help.

Is location critical, does your website designer need to be close to you?
Most of our clients are within 1 hour’s drive of the office so based on that I would say the majority of our clients would say yes – distance is critical. But in truth, I’ve only met the majority of those clients once or twice! A handful of clients have never met me which I feel makes the job a tad harder. Personally I like to meet the client on site, meet the staff, see the products or get a feel for the services, that way I can do a better job. But if you’re OK with emails and telephone call your perfect web partner could be anywhere (I would recommend staying in the UK tho)

Is price important?
Well of course it is, no client has ever said, ‘take as long as you like’. VAT may also be an issue, if you’re VAT reg you can use any web designer but like many start up businesses the chancellors additional 20% fee could be critical. Also look at the future; hosting renewal, maintenance fees, edits, additional pages etc. – they can put your yearly costs up.
Also consider…If you’re business requires print design, signage, workwear, some web designers like Oast House Media offer the one stop package which could save money.

Google SEO (search engine optimisation) – getting top of search engines, how important is that?
Website designers have varying luck at getting websites top of search engines. We target Google because Google has 90% of the UK search market. SEO success is based on a good understanding of web page tagging, page layout, page naming, internal links and keeping up with the latest Google SEO requirements, especially when dealing with off-page SEO (incoming link building, blogging, social media etc). An active web designer will be able to tell you exactly what is required. They will also clamber to show you just how well their existing clients’ websites are doing – we love showing off.

Website designers or web developers?
There are 2 main protagonists in the web business, those that design and them what develop. A website designer can make your website look the dogs nuts (see portfolio), they should also take you through a design approval process (we use a unique 6 phase launch process) ensuring you get what you want, not what they think you want.

A web developer is more akin to a programmer, a kagool wearing techy who will build a very efficient, all ‘bells and whistles’ website that may look like something a 5 year old has built!

The trick is to get the hybrid – web designer and developer. This will ensure the best of both worlds

What happens if I have a problem post launch?
Most technical problems we encounter are caused by emails and the vast majority of those are caused by ISPs like BT (ring any bells?). I would take a good guess and say that on average we spend 3hrs a week fixing a clients email issue. Occasionally there’s a server issue but this is very rare these days. Servers are robust kit with back-up power supplies, archiving and many more devices in place to keep your website up and running. Larger sites like e-commerce shop websites should go through a Beta testing stage to iron out the glitches so on the whole there should be no problems

Do you want to edit my website?
We recommend that elements of your website (ie: new feed) are updated as part of your ongoing SEO. Google loves refreshed data so being able to update your website is very important. A good web designer will offer you options to suit your abilities, time and/or budget. We offer free minor edits, free updating software, a more sophisticated design editing package or a low cost editing agreement carried out by us.

Local or national exposure?
Local SEO campaigns can usually be successful with just good on page SEO set-up and regular on page updates. A national SEO campaign is much harder basically because the keyword contention is much higher. This is where you need a specialist SEO company that delivers a trackable off page SEO campaign. Not all website designers in Kent can deliver this. We work with a partner company that we know and trust, who deliver a reliable SEO product and charge based on success

In answer to the question ‘Who is the best website designer in Kent?’ the answer is several and most likely no more than a short drive away from your office.