Comparing an individual designer with an established healthcare website company:
| Criteria | Individual Freelancer | Established Web Design Company |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Typically less expensive upfront. | More expensive upfront due to the broader range of services and resources provided. |
| Expertise | Varies. Some freelancers are highly skilled, but their expertise may be limited. | Companies often have teams with diverse skill sets, ensuring all aspects of web design and development are covered. |
| Availability & Communication | Freelancers might be working on multiple projects and may have limited availability. Communication can be less structured. | Established companies typically have dedicated project managers to ensure regular, structured communication and consistent availability. |
| Reliability | Freelancers may lack the reliability and accountability of a professional company. They might be harder to track down if issues arise post-project. | Professional companies are generally more reliable and accountable, offering post-project support and services. |
| Scalability | Freelancers might struggle to scale up if your project expands or your needs grow over time. | Companies are generally better equipped to handle growth and change, offering more flexibility and scalability. |
| Project Management | The success of project management largely depends on the individual. Some freelancers might excel at this, while others may struggle. | Companies usually have proven project management processes in place, ensuring tasks are completed on time and within budget. |
| Range of Services | A freelancer might specialize in a specific area and may not offer a wide range of services. | Companies typically provide a full suite of services, including design, development, SEO, content creation, analytics, and more. |
| Long-Term Maintenance & Support | Freelancers may not always be available or committed to providing long-term support. | Companies often offer ongoing maintenance and support packages, ensuring your website stays updated and functional in the long run. |
| Compliance and Legal | The doctor must review and ensure everything is up to the necessary standards. | Healthcare web developers usually are aware of HIPAA and accessibility rules and implement them. |
Trusting the design of your medical practice’s website can be a hard decision to make. First and foremost, you want to ensure that whoever is working on your website is someone with integrity, a stellar reputation, and extensive experience in medical website design. Once you choose someone, the hard part is letting go of the design process and trusting that their abilities are enough to make your website successful.
Today, more than ever, the web design options are endless. You can choose from a web design company that deals with every type of business under the sun or a web design company that deals with niche industries, like medical and dental websites. Add to that the availability of individual web designers, and making the right choice becomes even harder.
Understanding what differentiates a web designer from a web design company can help make decision-making easier.
What’s the purpose of a website?
Before you consider which web design company to hire for your website, it’s important to understand what the purpose of your website is. Websites aren’t tools that exist to exist. They’re living, breathing marketing machines. More often than not, your website will be patients’ first bit of exposure to your practice. It creates a first impression – good or bad – that follows your practice. That’s why website design for medical practices requires a solid understanding of patients and their needs.
In our experience designing websites for various medical and dental offices, we strongly understand what you want your website to do. In addition to providing patients with your phone number, address, and office hours, you also might want them to be able to schedule appointments or access their records. When it comes to getting leads, the functionality of your website is just as important as the aesthetics of your website.
What is a web design company?
A web design company is a group of highly skilled individuals who work to design your website. At Optimized360, our team has numerous years of experience in medical website design. We understand how doctors and dentists think, what their audiences need, what their primary business goals are, and the best way to accomplish those goals online and offline.
A web design company includes more experts than just web designers. They have entire teams dedicated to digital marketing and SEO, which are an important part of initial web design and a long-term marketing strategy.
Established Web Design Company Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Broad Expertise: A web design company has teams with diverse skills, ensuring all web design and development aspects are covered.
- Professional Project Management: Companies usually have proven processes and project managers to ensure projects are completed on time and meet standards.
- Reliability: Professional web design companies are more reliable and accountable, offering post-project support and services.
- Scalability: Companies can often accommodate this more effectively if your project grows or your needs change over time.
Cons:
- Cost: Professional companies usually have higher rates due to the broader range of services and resources provided.
- Less Personal: You may not have direct access to the individuals working on your project, and communication could feel less personal.
- Less Flexible: Due to their structure and processes, companies might be less able to accommodate sudden changes or unusual requests.
- Potential for Over-Servicing: Companies might suggest additional services that you don’t need, leading to higher costs.
What are the benefits of hiring a web design company?
Hiring a web design company that your industry peers recommend will give you complete confidence that the end product you get will be both effective and high-quality. Additionally, you can rest assured that your project won’t be slowed down due to a lack of bandwidth or no accountability. At Optimized 360, we’re accountable to our team and clients, working at full speed to ensure everyone’s needs are met.
Additionally, working with a web design company that brings niche expertise can help ensure all medical marketing efforts are effective and tailored to the needs of your unique audience. We know that not all patients are alike. Someone needing breast augmentation will be attracted to a different website look than someone looking for dental implants.
We give our clients complete autonomy when it comes to setting a budget and expectations. If you want nothing to do with running or updating your website, we can ensure updates are regularly made. We’re always available to get the job done. If you want a website that allows you to update, we can also make that happen.
A web designer is typically an individual who is skilled in web design. But just because someone is skilled in web design doesn’t mean they’re the best choice for your practice. For example, someone might have experience building restaurant websites, but that differs starkly from the expertise needed when executing website design for medical practices.
Because web designers tend to work independently, the amount of time it takes to complete a web design project is much longer than what it would take for a web design company. Additionally, if something happens to that individual that causes them to be unable to complete your website, you’re at risk of losing weeks or months of work and starting from scratch.
Hiring an Individual Freelancer
Web designers are oftentimes cheaper than hiring a web design company, but with that lower price tag often comes lower-quality work. Don’t let a lower price fool you. You can often end up with a website that is not only less attractive but also less functional. Imagine hiring an individual who claims to have experience in website design for healthcare professionals. This person promises a responsive website, which is a must with today’s technology. He also guarantees you’ll get lead forms and a nice contact page.
As he begins to put the website together, you realize it isn’t responsive; it’s more mobile-friendly, meaning it shrinks on your phone or tablet but doesn’t adapt to the actual screen size. Additionally, he’s created lead forms that include countless fields, something most users would abandon. And the About Us page has a poorly written paragraph about where your office is located.
Websites designed like this lack personality, and even worse, they’re incapable of doing their job to get you leads.
What are the benefits of hiring a web designer?
Pros:
- Cost-Effective: Freelancers usually have lower rates than a professional web design company.
- Direct Communication: You often work directly with the person creating your website, leading to clear and straightforward communication.
- Flexibility: Freelancers can be more flexible with their time and can readily accommodate specific needs or last-minute changes.
- Personal Touch: Freelancers can often provide a more personalized experience as they handle fewer projects simultaneously.
Cons:
- Limited Expertise: An individual may not have the skills necessary for complex web design projects.
- Reliability Issues: Freelancers may not always be as reliable or available as a professional company.
- Less Structured: The project management process may be less structured, which could lead to issues with deadlines or quality.
- Lack of Long-Term Support: Freelancers may not offer long-term support or maintenance once the website is complete.
Don’t Hire Solely On Price
We’ve had countless clients come in needing an immediate fix on their website. The most common reason why: they hired a cheaper web designer instead of a company. As a result, their website looks nothing like how they envisioned it, and they can’t get ahold of the guy to fix it.
We get it; hiring the guy willing to make an entire website for $500 can be tempting, but would you go to a plastic surgeon offering breast implants for $500 or a dentist offering dental implants for $500? No. And the reason is that, you know, at those prices, the quality of the work is likely sub-par. If an individual can’t price their work at what it’s worth, it shows they value neither themselves nor their work. Your practice and patients deserve better than that.
