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Moline Web Design: QC TOTAL Tech careful who you trust…

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I have recently been investigating my personal local market for website design in Moline, IL. In doing this I realized many of the sites offering hosting do not have very well designed sites. It's kind of crazy to me:  you are trying to sell people on web design when your site itself is clunky or a dated design.

In doing so, the best place I could find a good listing of businesses for this topic was in the online superpages. I never really came across a single site that was upfront with their cost. I found this somewhat annoying. I know website to website is different but many people I have talked to just want a professional web presence, and something like this could be priced. I hypothesize they leave the prices off to haggle with you. Meaning they want to try and get as much out of you as they can (despite what they have charged others). Let's face it for them designing the site themselves is a matter of low overhead and mostly labor. (There are a few extra costs involved but most sites would be minimal in this regard.)

For instance, I saw a company on superpages I am personally familiar with, QC Total Tech. In the past I have done contract work for them, which I was never paid for. I did some custom PHP programming since the owner himself was either not as versed with PHP or did not have time. (I am not really sure which).  I spent many hours working on a business directory listing service and I was told another person would be working on the look and design. This fell through first, the designer did not have time due to his personal life. The man who had contracted me said he would be doing it himself just to continue building code. During this time QC Total Tech attempted to get me to work more hours in offering me more pay, I refused. I have a full time job with benefits and at the time of this offer had still not received payment.

The entire project lasted for about 5-6 weeks. I had originally been building the project on my own server but was asked to move it to QC Total Techs. This was my first mistake...(stupid me). After completing the project the site went live, and is still live to this day with all my labor... in fact featured on a local newspaper! I fixed a few bugs that were pointed out to me then waited for payment... My payment never came. I received emails that it would, then no emails at all. What I did receive in the mail was a  notice that QC Total Tech was bankrupt. Apparently, its really nice tactic to just claim bankruptcy instead of paying your contracts when you have no real inventory to lose.

Today when I was on their site I noticed they had redesigned and were still an active business entity (what happened to bankruptcy). I warn the local business and others seeking local websites (Quad City Area)to look elsewhere for web hosting. QC Total Tech is unethical and poorly run. I can tell you just by looking at the site you can get a better website for less. If you want an example of their lack of web development knowledge simply go their homepage and look at the title in your web browser. Home-Keyword,Keyword...blah blah. A good designer knows this is not an effective title for a webpage for search engines or in general human readability. I could do a full analysis of all the problems with their front page but my intent is not to tear apart the site; I don't want to make an already long blog post longer. Please heed my warning, doing business with this company may leave you with out a website in the future should their company continue to practice in the manner it does.

Tags: bad design example, business review, qc total tech, seo, web design company, web ethics