Same Company to Design & Host Site

Hiring the same company to design and host your site

This option involves the fewest logistics, but may come with trade-offs in design quality or host reliability. Note that the design and hosting require different sets of skills and knowledge. When choosing a service, evaluate their experience and ask for references in both areas. Go to sites the company has designed and browse them. Note how the sites to visit, how easy it is to understand, and quickly loaded into your browser.

To assess the ability of e-commerce company accommodation, contact customers and ask how satisfied they are with the service. Find out how often the server is down and ask about help desk response. Find out what order the issues - if any - they have experienced. Also, consider how your site will be updated. Can you upload changes directly or do you have to wait for someone at the hosting company to get there? If the latter, ask current customers about your experience with this process.

If you are still considering the design and hosting service after studying their design capabilities and talking with current clients, you may also want to know if it has been recent turnover in key personnel. An individual designer, coordinator or account manager can make a big difference in quality or design support.

Using a separate design and hosting service.

By separating the design and hosting, you have more options. Therefore, it can have more control over your budget and your site. Technical incompatibilities are a risk by taking this approach, however. Make sure the designer is familiar with your hosting service and technical capabilities. To help facilitate information flow and minimize technical problems:

Choose a short list of hosts that offer the ecommerce capabilities you require and pass "reliability" tests. Read Do not Make These Hosting Mistakes to answer your questions and other mistakes to avoid.

Find a web designer with experience in e-commerce applications. Together, decide on the hosting service and ecommerce systems you will use.