How to Choose a Web Designer
Written by Denise Witter Wednesday, 23 June 2010 10:33
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) or is it?
How to pick a Web Designer for your small business.
You've put in the thought and you've put in the time and now you have your own business to show for it. You've heard about the dismal failure rates of small businesses just starting out, and you don't want to be in that group. So the question arises, how do you market your business effectively while trying to keep your cash flow positive?
You get a Web Site.
Fortunately (and unfortunately) there are plenty of web designers from which you can choose. Within this large group of web designers is an even larger range of web design prices. Some web design companies charge very low prices of a couple hundred dollars and some charge into the thousands of dollars and higher.
Is picking a web designer a case of "you get what you pay for?"
The answer isn't simple because it's both yes and no. It depends on how you want your web site to work for you, and really, you do want it to work for you. The internet is highly competitive. You don't want a site that's just going to sit there. You need it to integrate into the search engines and rise in rank (by keywords) for the items you sell and the services you offer.
So the question arises again: How do you pick a web designer?
First, you need to differentiate between the two worlds of web design-- web design and web development.
Web Design
Web design is just that -- a site designed for the web. The web designer category can be broken down into a few groups. The first group of web designers are graphic designers trying to make their mark on the web. They are great with image and graphic manipulation and can produce beautiful designs on the web. The second group of web designers are those that code by hand, that is, they don't need to use software to put up a web site. The third group of web designers are those that depend upon software to design web sites. Sometimes a web designer will be a combination of all three groups, that is, a web designer may have graphic design skills, be handy with web design software, and still know enough code to go in and fix things by hand if trouble arises. All of the groups listed in the web design category can meet the end goal of putting up a web site onto the internet. They can put the text and graphics on the page and make it presentable. And if that's all you need, then you might be satisfied with this category. But, if you need your web site to be more interactive, then you should take a look at the second category - the web developers.
Web Development
Web development goes a step beyond web design in that most web developers know at least one programming language (if not more) and can set up a database for you, an online store, a system for comments and feedback, and an ecommerce solution. They don't need to depend upon WYSIWYG visual software tools to set up your web site. They will work with you to develop a custom system that will suit your business needs.
Web Site Needs
Now that you have a basic idea of the differences between web designers and web developers, you need to think about what your web site needs are. If you think in terms of web site cost, you might think either money saved, or money well spent. By choosing a less qualified web designer to set up your web site, you might save a little money, but it will be money lost because if it doesn't get any traffic or a decent ranking in the search engines, no one will find it. Also, if the keywords are ill chosen, that will work against you as well.
Web designers that rely upon WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") software to design web sites might only charge you a couple hundred dollars, but it will cost you more in the long run through lost potential business as well as when you decide to have it redesigned (as most businesses in this situation end up doing) and your new designer has to do a complete overhaul because a.) the code is sloppy and b.) the site is not compliant. These software dependent web designers are certainly ones you should try to avoid as well as the ones that work through a mass marketing system - a main company that sets these designers up with a portfolio that they did not design themselves and with a template system of web sites that they try to sell to you. How do you avoid them? It might be tough especially if they can "talk the talk" but you need to find out if they can "walk the walk." The way to do this is to ask questions.
How do you know what questions to ask when interviewing web designers?
A portfolio is not enough. It may show scope and you may be able to pick up on some things including: there's a common theme running through the web sites they design, or all the web designs look alike, or the designs are all unique, etc. But still, a portfolio is not enough. Here is a list of questions you should ask:
- Do you code by hand or do you use a WYSIWYG visual editor such as Dreamweaver?
Visual editors create messy code sometimes that can inhibit your site reaching its potential in the search engines, but web designers that know how to hand code can clean up this messy code. - Can you explain to me what a web standards compliant web site is?
Your web site should be web standards compliant so that it is accesible to all of your potential customers regardless of whether those potential customers have disabilities such as the blind who use screen readers. A bonus to standards compliant web sites is that search engine spiders can read them better and this helps with your site's ranking. - Are you more proficient client-side or server-side?
If the designer can't answer this question, then you probably don't want to continue the interview. Examples of client-side scripting include knowledge of HTML and CSS while examples of server-side scripting would include knowledge of PHP and MySQL - Why are you worth your rate?
A truly well developed web site won't be cheap and you should find out what the web designer will accomplish for you. - Will your work on the web site end once you've finished designing it?
You may want to think about a web management service where the designer not only designs your web site but maintains it for a monthly fee. You may get perks with this option such as having the hosting fee included (if the web designer helps you set up the hosting), which with a management service they probably would.
Choosing the right web designer can be tricky and tedious as you sort through them all. Try not to let price guide you too much (i.e. pick the cheapest designer simply because its the cheapest) and remember, if you have a quality web site from the start, you'll earn back what you spent on it.
