If you’re local to Asheville, and you’re exploring the many web design and web development companies around, then I’d recommend you make a good hard think before choosing bewteen the first few that pop up in your Googles.

Many of my local competitors offer web design. They offer web development. But I–not you–I know which ones are good and what it is they do well. And in general, it’s not design. It’s not development.

There are a few local designers that are pretty good, but they lack in programming skills, or SEO skills, or often a general understanding of how a website even works. Or how the files relate to each other. In other words, lots of designers quickly flounder outside of a comfy, cozy (and cluttered-up) Dreamweaver environment.

Nothing against Dreamweaver, or FrontPage (ok, so maybe I do have something against FrontPage), but if your current or future web designer can’t operate outside of Dreamweaver, then you’ll be in for some real fun when it’s time to add that ecommerce engine to your site. Good luck with that. Oh, you need a web blog with commenting? Need a customer login portal? Good luck getting all that stuff running in Dreamweaver.

So what should you do? Well, you should probably spend lots and lots of time looking at each local company. You should look at their work. You should make sure you understand what portions of the website they’ve even built or designed. You should know the limits of your web designer. You should find out what they’re passionate about. You should find out if they’re capable of handling adding that blog or shopping cart. Or if they’re capable of finding the right person who can add that component.

In other words, companies offering unique web design and full-fledged web development services probalby don’t specialize in one area all too well. Sure, they can provide you with a sufficient design. But what do YOUR customers want? Do they want sufficient?

No. They don’t want just sufficient.

The local license tag office is sufficient. It’s old, crappy, run-down, smelly, hot, and scary. But it is sufficient.

But we have no choice but to use the local tag office. Your customers do have a choice. They’re going to choose the one that looks better. They’re going to choose the website that loads first. They’re going to pick your company or product simply based on the quality of your website. Superficial? You bet it is, but you already knew your customers are superficial.

When it comes to visual design, there’s no room to compromise on quality. Take a hard look. Talk to your web developer. Most of us are normal people, not the geeky computer nerds you think we are.