Potential Red Flags When Hiring A Web Development Agency

Updated on Apr 20th, 2021

Online marketing is becoming the spinal cord of businesses and enterprises. It is a significant source of information for people all over the world, and many people are active on the internet, and the number is increasing tremendously. The size of the business doesn’t matter, although, you should not take the web design lightly as the internet has become a significant source of information for many people all over the world.

Whether you’re developing the website from scratch or redesigning an old one, you will face the consequences of hiring the services of a web development company or getting your technical team to do it for you. 

Why choose a web development company?

Well, functionality and appearance are crucial and critical aspects of your business website. There is always a risk of losing prospective clients if your website is not professionally and securely designed. Most clients often evaluate companies and make their perception by researching their online presence before making any purchase. If your site has poor design or is not secure, clients will disengage and leave. 

Moreover, When you don’t know how trustworthy the company might be, hiring the right SEO company can be difficult and time-consuming most of the time. Having a digital marketing strategy that makes the use of SEO is critical and necessary. Its a no-brainer as to whether SEO would benefit you and if you don’t select the right SEO agency you will ultimately end up paying more than what exactly you’re hoping and you possibly would not able to get the desired results, if you don’t have the right team on your side to deliver you the desired goals.  

Competition is always on the rise, and web development companies are always looking to improve the quality of the services they offer. So, the following are the nuts and bolts that will help you keep the fraudsters at bay:

1. Physical Office and Staff:

The critical point to consider as many website developing agencies are hidden beneath the umbrella of “online-based company.” So, professionalism is a must and must be taken into consideration. As we know, how a business is presented speaks a volume. Even today in the modern era, where technology has virtually taken over everything, however, it is very crucial for a business to have a working space and an operational base. All you need to do a thorough background check of your preferred company, by looking at the company’s physical address, employee profile, etc. so that you can ascertain, whether the business is legit. 

2. The website should be professionally designed:

All you need to remember is that it’s their business to make your site look pleasant and appealing. In a similar way, shouldn’t their website look functional and attractive too? Don’t you think? So, if they didn’t put much effort into creating their site, its time to leave. Don’t dup into promises of getting a custom-built website, when it’s just a simple template. 

3. Web-designs should be up to date:

The styles of presenting the websites are rushing. Keeping up with the regular updates could be challenging for the businesses, but at least they should stay ahead of trends. What happens in the case, the web development agency doesn’t keep up with the trends?

Your business might get an old-fashioned look on the internet. You need to find an agency that keeps up with the regular changes of modern website designs. 

4. Satisfying Customer Reviews:

Do your homework!! Adverse publicity and several complaints from the company’s previous clients might give you a hint on who you are dealing with. Let’s discuss how you can spot a web design scam before you get dragged into it. Find out, has the web development firm ever worked with the businesses of your type and on websites with a similar technical requirement. Track their reputation. Looking at the company’s past reports and projects might give you a brief idea of its capabilities. 

Moreover, communication plays a very critical role. If you can not reach them through any way of communication, you need to walk. So obviously, you can not hire the services of the people you can not reach. You should be able to make direct interactions with the experts who are working on your project to manage the progress through different stages. 

5. Offering Impractical Assurances:

Since we know SEO is an excellent tool for achieving desired rankings. If any SEO agency “guarantees” that it can send your site skyrocketing up the rankings, it is indeed a red flag. We need to understand that assurance of achieving some specific results within a given period could be unrealistic. Some agencies would be guaranteeing these results due to the usage of “black hat” techniques (practices that are against the search engine’s terms of service and may get you banned from google). There are other reasons why such claims should be met with skepticism.  The search engine algorithms, the level of competition in the market, ongoing marketing trends, including many other factors, contribute to how high or low site ranks. 

So, if an SEO company is guaranteeing results or a number one spot on the google search page, you should avoid that company. 

6. Urging you to sign a long term contract:

Although we know that, it is not beneficial for the brand to bound by a long term agreement. 

Things keep changing in the world of SEO, and according to that, the agency would need to make frequent adjustments to your campaigns and could eventually affect the budget of the company. So, in other words, the unpredictable nature of SEO calls for a frequent discussion between the agency and the clients and doesn’t allow for the same strategy to be executed for a more extended period. Therefore the clients shouldn’t have the long term contract, and SEO campaigns should be seen as month-to-month efforts. Clients should stay clear of those agencies, who are trying to lock them into minimum contracts of 6 or 12 months. Hence, An agency’s insistence on a long-term contract is a definite cause for concern. 

7. Preferred mode of payment:

Most legit businesses would ask you to make payments via credit cards, checks, and direct cash payments are also used but not generally preferred nowadays. In case, If your web development agency demands their pay through a wire transfer, you should be worried. And, If your funds cannot be accounted for, it’s just another case of a broken promise.

Sum up:

So, it is the image of your business which is at stake. Therefore, it is advisable that you thoroughly go through a company’s review and what it can offer before you entrust it. You need to look for a web development company that provides your business with a new face and valuable competitive advantage in terms of acquiring a properly functioning website.

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