How to Find the Right Web Designer
In our Website Basics Explained series we will show you where to start to get your first website, and what you need to go online.
You decided to get your own website and use a professional web designer. So, who should you hire? A Google search result for San Diego Web Designer for example returns about 11 million results, ranging from individual freelancers to big web design companies in and outside of California. So how do you find the right one for your particular website needs?
Where to look for a good website designer
Does the person or company creating your website have to be in your area? Not necessarily as almost everything these days can be done online. However, if you don’t live in the middle of nowhere you will certainly have more than enough web professionals in your neighborhood, so why not use somebody locally?
An online research on Google is certainly a great place to start. The first obvious thing to do would be to search for San Diego Web Design Freelancer or San Diego Web Designer. Of course you want to replace ‘San Diego’ with your own city, but unless you want to end up with hundreds of huge nationwide companies beyond your budget, you really want to narrow down your search to a local area.
How to Contract With a Web Designer
In our Website Basics Explained series we will show you where to start to get your first website, and what you need to go online.
If you followed our checklist in our article How To Find The Right Web Designer you have already selected a couple web designers you consider to hire to create your website. Now it’s time to get in touch with the designers you selected, explain your project, and ask for a quote.
Website Scope Of Work Checklist
Before you start, try to find out your scope of work. It’s not necessary to describe your website’s layout and content in detail, but answers to the following questions will help your web designer better understand what kind of website you need, and whether he or she can provide these services:
* Who are my potential visitors, what are their demographics and location (nationwide online shoppers to buy my products, or local customers in need of my services)?
* What do I want them to do (buy my product, contact me, subscribe to my newsletter)?
* What is my budget (see our article How Much To Pay For A Web Designer)?
* Do I have a logo and content (text and photos) to provide, or do I want the web designer to create this for me? (not every web designer does copy writing or design logos, and it will add to your costs)
* Do I have a specific design, layout, content or navigation of my website in mind (finding some sample websites you like is always a big help)?
* Will my website need constant updates (e.g. maintain store inventory, add new content, photos, events)? Then you will need a dynamic website with ‘back office’ part where you can do these updates yourself, or you have to outsource it.
Creating an Author Web Site – How to Find the Best Web Designer to Sell Your Book Online
Why Are Web Designers Such Flakes? A Reality Check.
Circling the drain of unresponsive or missing in action web designers is a common dilemma. The Question is this: As a self-respecting author with a plan and a purpose, how do you choose a designer you can afford and rely on?
As a small publisher, or self-published author, you are faced with the high-cost of publishing a book. Your ever-growing budget includes editors, book cover and interior design, maybe a book coach or advisor, printing costs, fulfillment needs, marketing … my goodness, where does it end? When does the author start making money? Well, this is a question for another article all together. The point here is, how much should you allocate to the added expense of hiring a web designer? Can you hire someone who can do it all and is affordable to boot?
Ah, herein lies the problem. The one-man show dilemma-freelance artists. A newly graduated artist (or even an established one-person show) can be a very enticing option for someone with a small budget, especially when they are often a third of the price you would pay with a full-service design house. They are typically hungry, excited, talented, reasonably priced, and they can do it all. Yeah!!! So what goes wrong? Burnout. A freelance artist often over promises and eventually under delivers. They over commit because of the opportunity to build their portfolio; they chock it up to needed experience, and maybe even their desire to help another artist. But at the end of the day this is the perfect recipe for disaster. Why? Because it’s truly hard to do it all yourself and when you finally reach that wall, you shut down and walk away, close the door, stop returning calls-you move on.