How to choose the best web design company in Dubai?

We always try to educate our clients and stress the importance of their website in the modern world. As digitalization is taking over very rapidly in Dubai, UAE and trends have been changing, the online domain becomes much more important than ever before. No matter what industry you belong to or what type of products or services you are selling, if you want to build your unique brand identity and a good reputation, then your online strategy is necessary and your website happens to be the centre of gravity for your online strategies. You might be spending extra on your social media platforms, maybe hired dedicated teams to handle your social media and other online strategies and advertisements, eventually, everyone will end up on your website, and this is where it could either make you all efforts to pay off or wasted.

That is why when it comes to develop a completely new website or revamping of your old website you would have to acquire a professional web design company in Dubai, UAE. But since there are hundreds of web design and development agencies operating in Dubai and other parts of UAE, then how could you make it sure that you are selecting the best web design company? In this guide, we will discuss a few basic factors with which you can easily evaluate by yourself to determine if a web design company is suitable for your needs or not.

Here are the basic factors and different stages of evaluating a web design and development company in Dubai, UAE:

0. Define your goals and objectives first

Before we step into the list of the important factors to choose the best web design company in Dubai, we also want to discuss one very important point which is to ‘define your goals and objectives first’. As your website is an integral part of your broader online marketing strategy, so you must have to define your goals and objective for your marketing campaign and the website itself. Once you are set with a clear goal of your marketing campaign then start thinking about the website that can support these goals.

1. Prepare a list of the web design companies that you would like to work with

You should prepare a list of the companies that you want to work with. As you are seeking a web design agency in Dubai, UAE. So, start with evaluating the websites of the web design agencies, as they are selling the same thing so they should have displayed a remarkable design with extremely well user experience for their website visitors.

Here are a few steps to shortlist web design agencies in Dubai, UAE:

First, evaluate their website in terms of design and functionalities
Then look up for their portfolio and work samples
Check their social media and online profiles
Explore further to try to find online reviews about the selected web design companies
Ask your colleagues and friends to suggest you a web design agency in Dubai with which they have previously worked and had a good experience
Don’t rely on the directory listing and third party ratings, it could be misleading or confusing

Once you shortlisted some web design agencies, let say, 8 companies that you have shortlisted from the above steps and online searches from Google or Social Media, etc. The next step is to contact them one by one.

2. Contact the shortlisted web design agencies

Contacting the shortlisted web design agencies is the first step into your deal with them. You can usually find contact numbers, address and the email ID on their website most likely in the header/footer and obviously at their Contact Us page. The best approach is to leave a ‘call back request’ or fill in the ‘contact form’ or ‘request a quote’ form. Here are some points to be noted:

How much time do they take to respond?
What kind of email they have sent you in response?
If they have sent you a very lengthy email with multiple discount offers or attractive packages, etc then ignore them.
If they take too long to respond, then ignore them too, either they might be very busy, or else they have a lazy team, which could later cause you difficulties in project execution and support.

Usually, companies set auto-responder which you receive within a few minutes, then some salesperson or technical consultant or business analysts approaches you, try to evaluate how they have had approached you? try to evaluate the person:

What questions did they ask you?
How technically sound do they look?
Did they ask the right questions to gather relevant information to understand your requirements or just an ordinary sales pitch?
How confident they were in answer to your queries?

And stuff like that. If at this point you feel okay, then set up a meeting and do a proper requirement gathering session.

3. Set up a requirement gathering meeting

The requirement gathering meeting should be thorough and detailed. Prepare some questions beforehand and include them in the discussion. Try to evaluate the team who came for the meeting:

How technically sound they are?
What kind of questions they have asked you?
Did they provide satisfactory answers to your questions?
Don’t go in technical details but keep it to the objectives and your expectations from the web design.
Evaluate their suggestions that how convincing and relevant those suggestion were? Could you further improve your website with their suggestions or not?
If the web design agency only takes down your requirements and do not suggest anything from them, then ask them for their suggestions and ideas, and evaluate them too.

If you felt satisfied with them then move to the next step.

4. Request for Proposal and maybe a Presentation

Once the requirements are conveyed and clear project scope has been defined, then let the technical/IT teams from both sides agree on the technical details. Usually, this can be done through emails or a few short conference calls between the two teams. This doesn’t take much time. Once this process is done, then request a final proposal from the web design agency. They might share it in email, but ask them for a meeting to discuss everything face-to-face. This will not only expedite the process but will also help you make a quick decision. If the website development company request for a presentation then let them do that, you might get more valuable information.

5. Request the Web Design Agency to provide you Sample Work and a few Clients

By this time your list has already been reduced. You might be left with only three or four web design companies to choose from. So, request them to share their sample work with you, and also a list of a few recent clients. Contact their clients and asked them about their experience with the agency. This will significantly help you in getting a neutral opinion about the vendor.

6. Evaluate the Contract Thoroughly!

Evaluate the contract and their terms and conditions thoroughly. See if their terms and conditions are only to protect their interests or are set up on neutral grounds as per the industry standards. You are the client, they must have to abide with your terms and conditions. But of course, your terms and conditions shouldn’t be so tough and one-sided. Agree on payment terms and deadlines.

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7. Support, Maintenance Contracts and SLAs

This is a bit tricky part and we being a leading web design company in Dubai, UAE often noticed that the customers don’t usually pay much attention to this part. Your website is not just a product which you buy or request a custom-built for you and wait until the warranty gets expired. But in the modern market in Dubai, UAE and all across the world the websites have become more like a service. Which requires a reliable vendor or partner who can assist and support you with your regular needs of updates, upgrades and changes in the website. Request them for the Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) and their after-sale support policy.

SLA is a service level agreement. It is an agreement that defines the terms and conditions of any IT service’s service delivery mechanisms. Whenever you are building a website, you need to host it somewhere, either you can host it in your local data centre, which obviously will increase you’re internal IT cost. So, the best approach is always to host your website on third-party hosting or cloud hosting. Whenever you are hosting on such platforms they provide you an estimated downtime and service recovery time in case of any interruption. Compare the SLAs of the shortlisted web design agencies too. Just a minute fraction could translate into hours or days if the SLA is signed for just only one year. So, be vigilant.

8. Data Privacy & Protection Policy

Data Privacy & Protection is very important. Especially when you are also having your emails hosted along with your website. You must sign a separate NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) with you web designing and hosting provider company to ensure your data will be protected with them. If you are hosting sensitive data such as emails or if you have any portal that allows uploading of documents such as complaint management system or something which is a part of the website development then you must have a data protection plan in place. You can achieve 99.9% uptime and data protection by requesting, SLA, backups and fail-over protection services from the hosting provider. Discuss these things in details with the web design company and then decide whether if you need any such additional service or not. As they happen to be a bit costly.

Conclusion

How to choose the best web design company in Dubai, UAE is not a simple question. Although it is a tricky job, if you consider all of the factors and steps we have mentioned in this guide, you can easily find a suitable technical partner and vendor for your business. As in UAE, there are hundreds of web designing and development agencies working, so finding out a reliable web design and development agency may sound difficult but in reality, it isn’t all you need is to pay attention to certain things and do the process in a very manageable manner as we have described in the above guide. At RSI Concepts being a very reputable web design and development company in Dubai, we always share such guides and blogs to help our customers and visitors. If you want to build a new website or a revamp is required or simply you want to evaluate your existing website, please feel free to approach us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment below and we will get back to you at the earliest.

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