Choosing a web designer and developer

At the moment I am having my first commercial website designed and developed and many people have been asking me "how do you choose one out of the thousands of companies." These are my few tips for this daunting process

1. Firstly look at their own site:

• Does it look good?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Do all the pages work?
• Does it work on all the popular browsers
  

2. Make sure they have a portfolio of pages they have designed. You can always email the webmasters of the sites in their portfolio and ask them if they were happy with the designer/developer.

3. If you are also getting them to do your search engine optimization then make sure they rank highly for their name and other popular keywords.

4. It is much easier to have one person to do all the work on the website, but remember that not all designers are good developers and vice versa so it might be worth using one of each.

5. Get a free quote on the website you want done. If they wont give a quote then move on to another company. Make sure they are friendly and will answer all your questions and emails quickly. Remember that cheap isn't always good - a professional web site that makes thousands a year can cost a mini fortune, but it is a once off cost! If the website is a hobby or simply fun then don't spend too much!

6. Give the designer and developer a really good idea of what you want. Some simple drawings of what you want your page to look like and where all the content goes is a really good idea.

I hope these few little tips help you! Good Luck!