Choosing
a Web Designer: 5 Things to Look For
SolveYourProblem.com Article Series: Web Site Design
So you've decided that it might be best to
leave web design to the professionals, have you? Well, the
unfortunate thing about web design professionals is that not
all of them are exactly professional. Some of them are working
from wildly out of date knowledge, and, well, some of them
are working from their parents' basement.
How can you protect yourself when you decide to hire a professional?
Well, here are some guidelines.
Qualifications are Meaningless
Web design is a new enough industry that what qualifications
there are have ended up being largely stupid and meaningless.
I've never met a good designer who has a qualification in web
design a qualification in proper graphical design is, of
course, something else entirely. You can guarantee that most
people with web design qualifications did them at a community
college to try and get rich during the dot-com boom. These
people know nothing about web design.
What you should pay attention to when you're looking at web
designers is which of their skills they think are important.
If they're marketing their Flash expertise to you, you probably
don't want to hire them. If they can competently explain what
XHTML and CSS are and why they're good for your website, then
they're a better candidate.
The Portfolio
The easiest way to tell whether the designer you're considering
is any good or not is to take a look at their portfolio. Good
designers will have a diverse portfolio, with plenty of attractive
sites that they've built for all sorts of customers, and they'll
be able to explain to you why they built each site the way
they did.
If the designer doesn't have a substantial portfolio yet,
you shouldn't write them off there and then but do say that
you're going to need to see something before you commit yourself.
A good designer will happily do a first-draft design for one
of your pages just to show themselves off. If you're happy
with what they've done, then the chances are that they've got
the rest of the design in their head, ready to code up and
send to you.
Usability is Vital
You should make sure that the designer you're talking to realises
that they're building your website for users all users, no
matter how they want to use it or which web browser they have.
Amateur web designers have a tendency to come up with things
that they think are impressive-looking, either visually or
technically, while ignoring who the website is actually for
your visitors.
Some questions to ask the designer include: Which browsers
are you going to test with? (They should reply with 'as many
as possible'). What is the purpose of my website? (They should
be able to explain the point of the site simply).
Setting a Price
Many web designers simply have no idea what kind of price
to charge for their services. If you post a project to a freelance
site where designers can bid on it, you'll get bids ranging
from $50 to $5,000. Both ends are pretty obviously ridiculous.
At one end, you've got kids with no experience and Indians
who don't speak English; at the other, you're paying pointless
committees to have meetings for a week.
Your best bet is to find someone professional but independent,
experienced but not corporate, and with a price that reflects
the quality of their portfolio. As with all things in life,
though, don't be afraid to negotiate and never agree to let
them do however much work it takes and pay by the hour.
Hosting Offers
Finally, beware of web designers who are trying to sell you
a whole package, together with a domain name, web hosting,
and the rest. Operations like this are almost always flawed
in one area or the other, since designers aren't really very
technical people on the whole. They'll either be web hosting
specialists who think design is so easy anyone can do it, or
they'll be designers who are reselling some cheap hosting package
for a premium. On the web, it's better to buy hosting yourself.
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SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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