So you’re looking for a new website or a redesign for your existing site? You have decided on WordPress because everyone has told you it’s great, easy to change and modify and there are 100’s of people out there who can do it for you. They are right WordPress can pretty much do anything you want it to do.
Starting your search
A quick search of the web brings up a list of the companies vying for your business so how do you choose? We can’t advise on creativity as that’s your preference but you’ll no doubt visit each site and check out their portfolio and latest work pages.
Note: Remember to check for example sites of the type you want them to build – if you want your site to have a store make sure the designer / agency has examples of sites with a store element.
The work on these pages should be their best and it should look amazing? But what about technically? Are the sites fast, secure and technically well designed?
What to check?
We recommend you check the designer / agency site and all the portfolio sites against the following list:
- Are all the sites listed live? You would be surprised how many are no longer active. This is not a good look as surely they will be in regular contact with their clients and regularly updating their own site.
- Run a speed test on the designer/agency site and all the portfolio/latest work sites listed. We use GTMetrix to check the speed of the site and the PageSpeed and YSlow scores you are looking for B rating for both and ideally a Page Load Time of less than 2 seconds.
- Check that all the sites are SSL enabled, Google rates SSL enabled sites higher than non SSL enabled sites.
- Check that latest technologies are employed including HTTP2, you can check for HTTP2 at KeyCDN.
If the designer/agency site fails these test then I would move on, alternatively why not host your own server if they really are the company you want to use. To find out how we can help you get your own site up and running why not contact us.
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