It is very hard for companies to find strong vendors or strategic partners. When it comes to finding a solid web design firm how can you tell how one is truly better than another?

It can be tough. A lot of companies do not know what to look for in a web design firm. So they shop around and then they go with whoever sounded the best, showed samples that looked good or came in the cheapest.

Realistically these are not the best solutions to finding your best web design or web development firm. The best way to figure out if the web design or web development firm is legit is to test their site to see how successful it is online.

Here are some things to look for in a successful web design or web development firm:

1. They have a website that looks professional and is easy to get around.
   
   
2. Their website has a blog hosted and branded like their main website (check the blog address if it is companyname.wordpress.com, it is not hosted on their site)
   
   
3. If they have a blog, how often do they post on this blog? (a few times a year, month, week, or day- we recommend weekly blog posts to show serious commitment)
   
   
4. Social Media - does this firm have social media accounts? The main ones to check are LinkedIn (this will give you more background on the person and company you are talking to- compare the companies you are shopping with their linkedin accounts), Facebook Fan pages, Twitter and also look at other ones like Plaxo, Naymz, Digg and Technorati
   
   
5. Make sure that they not only have social media accounts, but are active on them and have several people following them, commenting, recommending them and interacting with the people or the firm.
   
   
6. Lastly, check out their Website Grade with the Hubspot Website Grader tool. This will be good for you to do for your own site, but also great for you do do on the web design and web development firms you are shopping. If they have a website grade of 80+ then they are pretty good, but I would recommend using the company with the highest website grade that you can actually afford to use. This company will be very on top of what is going on in the online marketing world.

So although web design firms and web development firms seem overly abundant & commonplace the 6 areas mentioned above will help you figure out the best web firm for your company.

Check out the BRANDWISE website grade and see how we rank up to the competitors-