Frequently Asked Questions Regarding PSD Conversions Answered

Blog-Banner-2Frequently Asked Questions Regarding PSD Conversions Answered

PSD conversions are an integral part of any website designing process. If you want to design a website, if the initial designs are developed using design software such as PhotoShop, and if the design files are in PSD format then the designs have to be converted to HTML, XHTML, WordPress, Joomla, Magento or other formats before the designs could be actually used in your website. Despite this being an integral part of website designing process and websites are launched for all types of business, people still have loads of questions and doubts regarding PSD conversions. In this post, we will try to answer some of the most common questions and doubts that people have.

Why I need PSD conversions can I not use the PSD files directly for my website?

You cannot use the PSD files directly in your website. PSD is a proprietary file format. To open these files the user should have PhotoShop software installed in their computer. Web browsers cannot handle PSD files directly as it is beyond the technical scope of the browsers. Some people try to take the shortcut by using the JPEG format or the image format in their websites. You can upload the designs in JPEG format but the search engines will not understand the contents of your web page. This will put your website in a serious disadvantage. You need to have pages that could be understood by the search engines. Your web pages should be indexed fully by the search engines before it could rank the pages in the search results. If you upload the images directly, you will lose very badly in the search engine ranking race.

Various other technical issues will crop up when you load each page as an image file. The loading time of the pages will increase. When the PSD files are sliced they are optimized or coded to load in small pieces so that they do not tax the search engine resources but the overall loading speed is reduced. If all of these look too overwhelming do not worry, you need not have to torture yourself with all these technical data. You just need to understand you cannot launch a website without PSD conversions.

Do I need to provide the design to PSD conversions company or who has to provide the design to the PSD conversions company?

The scope of the services offered by the PSD conversions company is very limited. As a customer, you will be providing the designs to the PSD conversions company. In many instances, business owners hire a web design company and the web design company is responsible for delivering you with a fully functional website. They may either have a PSD conversions team to take care of the conversions or they may outsource the conversion tasks to a third party service provider, which you may not be aware of and this is a common practice in the website design industry. PSD conversions involve advanced coding skills. Most of the web designers are excellent designers but very bad coders. Therefore, instead of hiring an in-house team for PSD conversions they have the work done by a third party service provider.

It could be that you are a designer yourself with limited or no coding skills or you happened to have the designs in PSD format due to some other reason and want the designs to be coded into fully functional pages then you can approach a PSD conversions company. The scope of the PSD conversion services does not include web page design. You are therefore required to provide the design. In PSD format or any other format your service provider accepts.

How long does a PSD conversions company take to make the conversions?

The duration for the PSD conversions will vary from one service provider to the other. Moreover, it will also vary based on the complexity of your project, the number of pages that need to be converted and so on. You will any way need to make certain that your service provider gives you the timeline for the conversions before you sign up. Any professional PSD conversions company will first review the requirements in detail and based on your requirements will provide you their turnaround time for the job at hand.

Some companies also handle last minute conversion jobs or urgent conversion jobs for which they may or may not charge an additional fee. Before signing up it is important to get these factors clarified.

Do they make use of any software to convert the PSD files? Can I not use the software myself and convert the files?

There are number of software tools for automatically converting or slicing a PSD file to functional web page. However, it is recommended that manual coding is used because hand coded pages will have better output when compared to software aided conversions. Here again customers are required to double check whether their service provider offers manual coding services or automated conversions. You should opt for companies that offer 100% manual coding solutions. In this context, if automated or software aided conversions are what you are going to get then you might as well find a software to manage the conversions yourself and it makes no difference in this case whether you hire a company for the PSD conversions or whether you click the button yourself. Make certain you know what you are getting.

I don’t have any coding skills and do I need any coding skills?

You don’t need any coding skills or have any technical knowledge whatsoever. One of the reasons why you are hiring a PSD conversions company is because you don’t have the required coding skills. If you hire a reputed and professional PSD conversions company, you need not have to worry, as they will provide you with end to end conversions solutions whereby you just need to let them handle your requirements. Therefore do not lose your night’s sleep worrying that you do not have any coding skills.

Will the pages coded by the PSD markup company be search engine friendly? Or is SEO included in PSD conversions?

Essentially, SEO is not included in PSD conversions. Technically, these are two different segments and you cannot confuse one for the other. When you hire an SEO company you cannot expect them to take care of your PSD conversions and in the same way when you hire a PSD conversions company you cannot expect them to provide search engine optimization service for your pages. Having said this, you need to understand that if you have hired a professional PSD to HTML or XHTML conversions company, they are expected to follow certain coding standards. The pages that they code should be compatible with W3C standards. When the pages coded adhere to W3C standards then they will automatically be search engine friendly. This however does not cover advanced optimization of the pages for search engine ranking.

There is yet another factor that needs to be mentioned here, experienced companies make use of SEO semantics while coding the pages and if your PSD conversions company uses the latest SEO semantics then it should take care of all the basic requirements of making a page search engine friendly.

Even though we have established that SEO and PSD conversions are two different services, we cannot ignore or deny the fact that PSD markup does have its bearing on the page’s search engine friendliness.

After the PSD conversions should I convert another company to make my website into a responsive website?

This will depend on what type of PSD markup company that you are working with. Today, leading PSD slicing companies offer responsive coding as part of their regular conversion services. If you have hired your service provider without checking what type of conversions they offered then it will be partly your mistake because as a customer, you need to carefully review the scope of the service offered by your service provider. What exactly is your service provider offering? When it has become the general industry standard to include responsive coding as part of regular PSD conversions, not finding such service providers will be your mistake. Start looking around for the right service providers.

Assuming that you have already hired a PSD markup company and that they do not offer responsive coding then you will have to look for another company to take care of this part. Today, not having a responsive website is a terrible drawback. Even search engines like Google give special weightage to pages that are responsive. Moreover, more than 50% of the customers today make use of their mobile phones to access the internet. You need to ensure that your web pages are displayed correctly for such a massive chunk of visitors failing which you will be the loser.

What about the post conversion support?

There are no hard and fast rules on this topic. The extensiveness of the support you get after the PSD conversions vary from one company to the other. If you are in the process of selecting your PSD markup company, then this is one important area that you need to focus. Some companies offer seven days of post conversion support, while others offer 30 days support. You should however, know that there are companies that offer 365 days after delivery support. Which company do you think you should be working with? Obviously, the companies that offer the longest post conversion support. When you are looking for a company for your markup needs, you are very likely to be looking into their price tag, which is a normal behavior and there is nothing wrong in that. However, if you are going to look only at the price tag discounting all the other factors then you could end up choosing the wrong service providers or mediocre companies. Look for companies that offer the longest support. Along with this factor, you should also be looking into the other elements such as the reputation of the provider, experience, portfolio and so on.

The PSD conversions company does not have an impressive portfolio should I go ahead to hire them?

The portfolio of your service provider will exhibit their capabilities. There could be two reasons why they don’t have an impressive portfolio. One, they could be a new service provider and they do not have enough experience. In other words, they have not worked on many projects that they could showcase. Their experience level is very limited. So their portfolio is very weak.

Two, they may not be having anything that they could boast about. If they have been mediocre players, they will not have anything interesting to showcase. In this situation too, your service provider may not be having an impressive portfolio. An impressive portfolio that could be cross verified is your ticket to quality work. If you do not see anything good in the portfolio then it is important that you consider a different service provider because, you will never run short of options in the industry. There are many reliable players that you could consider. If you want to get the best value for your money, then go with a company that could show you something really worthwhile and not just make empty claims. Anyone could claim that they are the best but what justifies their claims is their work. So choose a company that has vast experience and impressive work to boast about. Just make it a point to confirm that the work showcased is their work done for actual customers and not some samples that they have created just to fill the portfolio. As far as PSD conversions are concerned, you need to go with the best. Any compromise in this area will put your website in a very disadvantageous position at multiple levels. Given the competition that prevails in the industry, you cannot afford to make any mistakes in this area. Investing enough time to select your service provider will go a long way in making you a happy customer.

Do PSD conversion companies offer money back guarantee and what does it cover?

This is one of the most controversial areas as far as PSD conversion services are concerned. To answer the above question, ‘yes’ PSD conversion companies do offer money back guarantee. However, not all companies offer this guarantee. Companies that have good standing in the industry offers money back guarantee. The money back guarantee is basically satisfaction guarantee. For some reason, if you are not satisfied with the quality of the conversions or with the standard of the service offered, you will be able to get your money back. You need to understand that not all money back guarantees are the same. You should not blindly think that the money back guarantee covers everything. Before signing up with your service provider, you should take time to review the terms and conditions of the money back guarantee. This will help you get a better understanding of the guarantee and what it covers.

Reputed companies offer money back guarantee to the customers just to make them feel comfortable so that they could try their services without risking their money. This also forces the service provider to offer the best service possible so that they could retain the order and get paid for the work done. Looking for companies that offer money back guarantee so that you the extra assurance that you need to carry the order forward.

To Conclude

What we have discussed above are just a few among the many questions that customers have when they hire their PSD to WordPress or PSD to Joomla conversion services. You too may have had these questions and doubts or you may have a totally different set of questions, which are not answered here. If you think that you have not found the answers for your questions then it is important that you find your answers before you sign up with your service provider. Well- informed customers know how to get the best out of their service providers. They know what to look for while selecting the PSD markup company and what to check when they are delivered their work. You should do the needful to make yourself that well-informed customer. More to that, when you educate yourself about these matters, you will be able to set realistic expectations and avoid unnecessary disappointments and frustrations down the line. It is the ill-informed customers that end up selecting mediocre service providers and it is such customers who end up feeling disappointed. Save yourself from such issues. Take your time to review and screen as many service providers as you need to, work with a credible company that manages to impress you with their professionalism and their resourcefulness. If you have further questions or have doubts do not hesitate to contact the service provider. It is their responsibility to answer your queries and clarify your doubts. You will certainly be happy that you contacted the service provider with your questions and had them answered.

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