Choosing a Web Designer

We know it can be difficult for newcomers to the internet, it's like buying a new computer when you don't know anything about them. Here are a few important things to consider when you're choosing someone who you want to charge with the responsibility of creating and marketing your online brand, and/or giving you the tools to sell your products online.

1. Designers or Developers? What's The Difference?

You will want to choose a web design company who can offer you a creative designer and a skilled developer. Designers and Developers do different things. Designers draw the pictures, and Developers turn them into a website. So the first person you will speak to is likely to be a designer who will ask you what you are wanting to achieve with your website and will design a great looking website which is easy to navigate. But what you get from the Designer are pictures. Just pictures. When you're happy with those pictures, they are passed to a Developer, who cuts them up and turns them into a working website.

It is extremely rare to find one person who is talented in both areas because the mindset required to do the design is completely different to the mindset required to build the website. Designers are 'arty' and creative and they know about contemporary colours and so on. Developers are not 'arty' at all, they are programmers who think logically, in sequences of events, and they know all about code syntax and geeky computer type things!

2. Varied and Original Designs

It's quite straightforward to create web pages with links and images, it's quite another to make sure it has good layout, good colour schemes, easy navigation, and works across all browsers. Do all the designers previous websites look similar? Have a good look at them and make sure they're unique because you want a designer who can demonstrate creativity.

3. Experience & Stability.

Seems obvious doesn't it, but choosing an experienced web design agency is important for more than just the obvious reason. Experienced web designers are likely to have more tools at their disposal, software and tricks they have picked up along the way, and which can help you accomplish your business goals more quickly.

It's also reasonable to assume that the longer they have been around, the more likely it is that they do a good job, although that's not a given of course. But customers will realise sooner or later that they are not getting what they expected and they will move away (as in any industry), so it would be helpful if you could establish whether or not the designer you're considering has hadd a LOW turnover of customers, and steady growth.

The following should give you a good indication of their experience..

Do they specialise in any particular area?
How long have they been designing and building websites, and how many have they completed?
Do you like the designer's web site? If not the design, the ease of use?
Do they have an extensive online portfolio you can peruse?
Do they build websites using HTML editors or do they use text editors? You would prefer them to say text editors.
Which databases do they work with? If they don't handle databases, they're not 'real' developers!
What are their credentials when it comes to promoting your website? Look for their case studies.

Visit them and have a chat, the process will be easier if you get along.

4. Helpfulness and General Customer Service

Make sure you talk to their existing customers because having a great designer/developer is one thing, but it's frustrating at best if they aren't prepared to go the extra mile for you. You need to be confident that they are prepared to drop everything and help you out when it's urgent and vital. Situations can arise outside office hours, will they help you without charging the earth?

5 Creating Content

Writing the text for your website is different from writing other promotional material. Carefully placed search terms and how the text fits into the design can only be done effectively by somebody with experience in creating website copy. At the same time, you want creative input, so choose a designer who is prepared to listen. This is something else you can find out from a meeting.

6. Search Engines and Website Promotion

We have customers who aren't the slightest bit interested where their website appears in the search engines. Generating traffic and subsequent business isn't why they wanted a website, strange but true. However most customers will want their websites to perform well in the search engine results. If this is you, then you clearly need to choose a designer who can demonstrate case studies of how they have promoted their customers' websites.

Do they have conventional marketing arrangements in place to promote your website?
How do they optimise your website? (please see 6.1. below).
Do they have copywiting resources available to create additional UNIQUE content for your website?
Do they have reporting methods in place to show comparative improvements?

6.1. Asking the question "Can you optimise our website?".
Easy for us to say isn't it. But you probably wont have a clue what they're on about when they reply. We want to help you out with this, but we wont discuss SEO techniques over the phone or on our website, after all, we're not in the business of teaching our competitors how to be more competetive! But we DO have a habit of being very helpful, so if you want to discuss the answers you have received to this question, please feel free to drop in and we'll tell you if they make sense. And please don't think this is a sick way of trying to capture business because it isn't. We don't want to become a free advice centre, but we will spend a bit of time helping you out.

7. Pricing

The price of a professionally designed website can be anything from £150 to thousands of pounds. You will need a designer who is prepared to give you a fixed price written QUOTE, not an estimate. Make sure the prices you are quoted are broken down so you can see how much you are being charged for hosting, domain names, graphic design, web development, and any marketing.

Many web design companies will ask for a retainer up front. We normally do and our standard terms are 30% in advance, but depending on our meeting and your circumstances it may not be necessary to charge a retainer at all (or we might ask for the whole amount). As you know, expensive is not always better. Cheaper isn't always better either! The hourly rate needs to reflect the amount of experience and talent they can put into your project.

8. Circumstances and Availability

Is this their full time job or a hobby? If it's a hobby they're not going to be able to upload an urgent new graphic that morning because they'll likely be at work. Of course there are many issues associated with engaging a hobbyist to develop your website, but the importance of this, as with all the issues above is relative to how serious you are about the impact and success of your website.

This article was written by Paul Clarke and is copyright Web Equip Ltd. If you want to use it please contact us. Please don't run the risk of using it without contacting us.