In this article we’ll look at eleven specific factors that can increase number of checkouts on any PSD to HTML service provider’s website

1.    Code Quality
When you are claiming to write quality code to your visitors, its very necessary that your own website code is clean, structured, w3c validated and must work on all common browsers. Good HTML code is important for every website, but it’s a basic requirement for the HTML providers’ website.

Code should be clean, CSS based, w3c validated, and properly tested on IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, opera and Chrome.

HTML coders often face challenges with browser compatibility because of the number of browsers available. There are companies like browser cam, litmusapp etc who provides services where user can check their website on almost on all the browsers with many different option. One such good list of all those service providers are available at: 10 Helpful Resources for Cross Browser Testing.

2.    Adequate information on the website:
PSD to HTML is a fast turn around service. It’s an industry where turnaround is generally 8-10 hours. In such case, its very important from visitor’s point of view to have all the information related the package, cost, timeline, Refund policy, workflow and contact details, online and easily accessible.

3.    Contact Details
It’s very important to have easily accessible contact details. It’s a online business so its always advisable to display company address, phone number, time zone, and if possible live chat or other instant messengers id.

4.    Effective Refund Policy
Website should have refund policy. It provides a kind of an assurance to the buyers.

5.    Satisfaction Guarantee
Most of the providers provide 100% satisfaction guarantee in terms if code is not good or not delivered on time, they will work until it’s done as per buyers satisfaction. Even some of the providers also provide 100% money back guarantee.

6.    Accurate Packages Cost
When most of the orders are placed online, its necessary to have all the details related to the cost on the website. It’s not feasible for buyers to mail the design first and then wait for price estimation. Everything should be clearly mentioned on the website and always avoid surprises in terms of hidden cost.

7.    Turn around Time
Like package cost, turnaround time should be available on the website. Not only display the turnaround time for home page but also for the inner pages.

8.    Clientele
Clientele plays a very important role in any online business. Most of the people use it as a testament for the quality of the work. In case if you are new in the industry and don’t have enough client names, then its advisable to pay more attention to the website design and information architecture. Provide satisfaction and money back guarantee to earn the confidence. And must have better mode of communication like phone number and live chat.

9.    Portfolio
Portfolio is equivalent important for any psd to html service provider’s website. It’s not required to display a huge list of the work but it’s a good idea to mention the samples on which you are really proud of. Try to show some complicated design, some simple design, some JavaScript work and if you provide, then samples of all other 3rd party application like wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Movable type etc.

10.    Online Order form
Easy, clean, secure and straightforward form is critical to any e-commerce website. If its hard or complicated for users to make selection or find information like package cost, turnaround time, what’s includes in the package, the visitors will definitely wont spend much time on figuring things out and will move out from the website. Ideally order form should have all the required information with in limited words and should not involve too many steps to place order. Ideally it should be of one page.

11.    Overcomplicated website with lot of JavaScript
The focus of any HTML provider website must be on showcasing their code expertise. A website that is heavy with not so required JavaScript will always distract the user. Also, it can create unnecessary interruption in some of the browsers. Its always required to make the website user friendly.

How to measure that PSD to HTML service provider has done a good job in converting your design to markup?

In our previous articles,

“16 Good Questions to Ask before hiring PSD to HTML provider” and

“What’s The Right Price For PSD to HTML Conversion?”, we discussed how to select a PSD to HTML service provider and how much to pay. Continuing our discussion, in this article we will discuss how to verify the code quality.

When we hire a company to code the website in html, we expect the final code to be w3c validated, compatible with all major browsers, operating systems and fully optimized for search engines.

Below is a short list of guidelines to determine how good of a job the provider is doing,

* w3c validation – Both markup and css should be validated. You can test it yourself by checking the code using http://www.w3.org/

For CSS validation, try http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

For HTML validation, try http://validator.w3.org/

* Browser compatible – there are many online services available like www.browsercam.com and www.browsershot.org, where you can check your website on different browsers and operating systems. At this link, you can check the listing of websites which are providing this service.

* Separation of content from style – all the styling should be done in CSS.

* File and image optimization – HTML, CSS and images should be optimized for search engines.

* External CSS and javascript – all the CSS and JavaScript should be defined externally.

Following these guidelines you can test the quality of the code written by your PSD to HTML service provider.

Please feel free to add any more test, you think, can be conducted to check the code quality.

In today’s economic condition, everyone is operating under limited budget. Many design agencies, designers and developers have outsourced their XHTML & CSS coding work primarily as a “cost-saving measure”. There are 200+ companies providing PSD to HTML conversion service these days. Unlike other services in web design and development, it is selling like a hot commodity. In fact, there is a dedicated website www.psdtohtmlcompanies.com which compares PSD to HTML companies and can assist you in finding the right provider as per your need and budget.

Factors affecting the conversion price:

There are many aspects, which determine the overall price of the code. Some of them are:
- Design complexity
- Turnaround time
- Feature set including browser compatibility, OS compatibility, w3c standard compliance, markup language and many more.

Choose the complete package
If you are looking for a quality code, it must have the following:

- w3c validated code
- Compatible with all major browsers including IE, FF, and Safari
- Compatible with all major OS including Windows, Mac and Linux
- Code must be hand coded
- Acceptable turnaround time

The Advantages of hiring an external company to code your design:

- Better and faster results. They are more focused on validation, accessibility and standards. Dedicated team results in quick turnaround.
- Variety of Options. Generally all providers offer a wide range of options
- Time Saving. Provider checks and makes changes to the code to make it compatible with all given browsers and OS combinations.
- Skilled Resources. Having worked in the same field over a period of time, they have mastered this art and possess great skills. They have better process and tools to accomplish the task.

If you don’t know which company should you hire or how much to pay, then I suggest you to visit www.psdtohtmlcompanies.com. They have a huge database of markup coders and you can refine & compare the data. The best part is you don’t have to fill different forms for different companies. There is only one form and you can send inquires to up to 10 providers.

Last month we were interviewing companies for the project. Prior to conducting the interview, we visited few websites and prepared a list of questions we wanted to ask.

I am sharing my list with you all and feel free to add any question, which you think one should ask before awarding the project

1. Are you a company or freelancer? If freelancer, is it part time or full time?
We were looking for a person who can deliver the project on time, so we decided that we would either go with a company or with full time freelancer. You can get part time freelancer for much less but then you have to negotiate on timeline. Some people prefer companies for peace of mind (since they are more reliable and have better process) and assurance but a few prefer Freelancers so that they can communicate directly with the person who is working on their project.

2. What is your time zone?
In outsourcing, time zone plays a very crucial role. For the success of any project, proper communication is a must. For our project, we wanted our design, development teams to be able to communicate with HTML coders. So we decided to go with a company/freelancer in same time zone.

3. What’s your Experience in writing hand coded html?
We didn’t want our coder to use any WYSIWYG software to write our code. We needed hand coded html and were looking for a person who had at least 3 yr. of experience. Though experience directly affects the cost but we needed a fast and accurate delivery. You can hire a fresher or less experienced coder at much lesser cost.

4. What is W3C?
Just to check their knowledge.

5. Will you validate our markup and CSS on w3c?
Standard compliant website was our first requirement. We wanted our markup and CSS code validated against w3c standard.

6. What’s the current browser usage statistics?
This question is to know how updated they are with the latest industry trends.

7. Can you write Div based XHTML?
We are against using tables in our markup. Div based XHTML website performs better in Search engines and it loads faster. It is easy to manage and make changes in div based website.

8. How comfortable are you with SVN?
With 20+ members working on same project, it is necessary to manage the different versions of the code. With Virtual team, it becomes even more important.

9. Can you show us some sample of your coding?
To check their coding style to make sure they always validate their code, and that the code works with different browsers.

10. Small coding test
We gave them our left panel and ask them to code it within specified period of time.

11. Error solving
We gave them a code, which was not working on IE6 and ask them to fix and then validate it.

12. References
We asked for 3 references with whom they had worked in last 6 months.

13. How you charge?
Generally, IT industry works on hourly basis and it is hard to predict any amount. But fortunately, PSD to html conversion service is more like commodity and you can get fixed cost. There are separate rates for home page and inner page.

14. How fast can you do?
Everybody needs fast delivery. We were also looking for a reasonable time frame like 3-5 days for home page and 1-2 day for inner page.

15. What are you guarantee?
If you are working first time with any company, it is better to have all bases covered just in case you are not satisfied with the output.

16. What can you assure us?
Just to know what can we expect in final delivery like browsers and operating systems they support, adherence to standard compliance, search engines optimization etc.

If you have any other question(s) you think should be asked, feel free to add to the list.