As the world wide web keeps on growing and growing, so do the number of cheap web design companies and web designers.

In today's market trying to compete with all these new internet companies is becoming harder and harder for long established.

The influx of all these new designers and developers is obviously driving prices down that customers are having to pay for new web sites and bespoke development projects. Prices are coming down with every new product that hits the internet, and each individual has to re-invent the way they promote themselves and their software, to try and win new projects and customers which they need to grow their businesses and essentially pay the bills.

Ask the question are all these new web companies and freelancers offering a quality service?

If you are in the market place to find a high quality web designer they should be looking for five key skills:

Web site Design Skills
Portfolio of Previously Designed Sites
Knowledge of the main scripting languages
Search Engine and Keyword Knowledge
Ability to communicate the customers wishes onto the website

Below I have outlined what each of these skills consists off.

Web Design Skills

Any good designer will be able to show you good design skills, you should be showing him or her sites that you like the look of and asking them can they create designs of a similar standard?

Portfolio of Previous Work

Once you have your shortlist of companies that you think you may want to use on your project, ask to see the portfolio of work.

Knowledge of the main scripting languages

When asking any self respecting web development company what languages they understand for creating dynamic websites and bespoke applications, they should at least know the following languages: html, css, php, mysql and javascript, these are the main languages for creating websites.

Search Engine and Keyword Knowledge

What is the point having the best looking website on the internet if nobody can find it, this is why I would always recommend asking them what kind of results they get on the search engines and what are the main techniques for optimising a website.

The most important things for optimising a website is make sure they use the correct keywords in the header tag and in the description tag, meta keywords do not hold as much weight as they use to but they still play a role. Once the site is optimised in the background you need to make sure that the content of the site is optimised correctly for the number of keywords to the weight of text on that page. We generally have a rule that you should fit 2 keywords into a paragraph of about two hundred and fifty words.
You should also make sure that they use h1 tags and h2 tags for the headings on the page.

Ability to communicate the customers wishes onto the website

Make sure you think you can have a lasting relationship with the company or individual you choose.

So, any individual or company that is offering