How do you tell if the business working on your website is ‘the real deal’? With so many businesses engaging in the website services area it can be difficult to work out who is the faker from the expert.

A few simple ways to separate out the wheat from the chaff is as follows:

• Do they actually have a verified career in the business? Ideally you want someone who has been working in the website and Internet space for at least 5 years if not 10 years.
• Do they actually have verified qualifications in the business? You should look for degree level (or better) qualifications – this ensures they have a strong theoretical background and so can actually do problem solving for you.
• Ask what they use to develop websites. If its just packages like DreamWeaver then it indicates that they do not actually understand ‘how’ what they develop works. This means your website may look nice on the browsers you are shown it on – but could be a dogs dinner on other browsers or devices. These days you really need to understand what the page is made of to make it work properly on different devices, no way out of it.
• Who provides their hosting? If they are just reselling a standard hosting provider (and there are many of those around) ask them who is responsible if the site goes down? Also ask them what the SLA (Service Level Agreement) is. Also ask if they have their own ‘in house’ IT support (and no, using the IT services of the reseller directly does not count). In other words you want to be sure who you are using both cares about the hosting and is directly able to support you in your time of need.
• Do they have a BCP plan in place? If they do not know what one is, walk away or run!
• Do they provide services beyond just websites? Do they provide ‘advertising’ or ‘printing’ or some other service completely unrelated to web sites? This is a darn good indication (a big red flag) that the Internet is not their core strength and you should go elsewhere.

We come across a lot of ‘fakers’ in the Internet space who seem to think that using a Desktop package to create a website and then use a reseller to host the websites so generated is providing a real service. We think not, its like the difference between a Cup-A-Soup and a home made Soup; the first is a quick fix, but the second is sooo much better for you. This is why we focus on providing you a comprehensive experience based service so your business can get the absolute best out of your website.

Why settle for a ‘just add water’ website, when you can have something that really enables and differentiates you online?

BTW If you think you are currently dealing with a ‘Jack of all Trades’, well done, the first step is identification! The second step is to get in touch with us to help sort you out and take your website to next level.

Note: We do not provide printing services directly but we know someone who can for you. Thats our difference, we focus on what we are good at and are quite willing to work with others who are good at what they do as well. This way everybody benefits.