Many small businesses have had poor experiences with web designers that have either gotten out of the web design business, or the web designer took a template approach that didnt meet the businesses marketing needs long term.
Remember: A sense of how long a web design company has been in business can help you know if they will be there long term.
Before listing the key things to look for in a good web designer, let’s define a few terms. Even though you may encounter variants on the name like web developer, web artist, webmaster and so forth – we’re talking about an individual who, alone or with some assistance, is going to “get you up and running.”
Good web design is not easy, though all webs must balance user needs with trade-offs in performance, aesthetics, and usability. And users differ in their abilities, tastes, and even the Web browser and Internet connection they use, so it is impossible to design a web that perfectly meets all needs for all users. Based on an understanding of the Web’s media characteristics and qualities, and using design techniques and an awareness of common design problems, you can create a plan for a web to meet a specific audience’s needs for a particular purpose.
Web designers make many choices about how to best achieve the effects called for by the web-planning process, the purpose and objective statements, and audience information.
1.A good web designer will ask questions to make sure they understand the marketing goals and needs your business has. This will ensure that the website is built with the success of your business in mind.
2.Its a good idea for the company you choose to build your website to have a decent presence in the search engines, if you cannot find a web designer by searching for their industry and the city theyre based in, odds are they are not skilled enough to help you gain exposure in the search engines.
3.Your designer may need to help you with some of the “big picture” questions, such as marketing, web copy writing (for search engines) and how to generate traffic.
4.All websites encounter issues at some point in time. Could be server issues, a software update, or even a few pieces of code that were accidentally changed. Whatever the issue may be, it is important that your web designer/web developer be accessible and have a built in mechanism for support.
5.With the explosion in the use of mobile devices to browse the internet and search for information, having a website that is optimized for multiple devices has become a necessity. Every web designer should be considering a mobile device strategy for every project-Responsive Web Design.
6.It is not uncommon for CMS websites to be the target of hacking attempts. It is important to know if there are any security precautions made to ensure that your website doesnt become the object of a malicious hacker.
7.For a full picture of all the costs involved in the project, ask for all the costs to be broken out individually – domain name and hosting, graphic design work, marketing fees and web development matters.
8.For any site with serious goals, you should look for a team of specialists. If the team is in fact just 1 or 2 people, ask about their capacity to handle your project. Are they going to be busy selling new clients while working on your site? How important is your project to them?
9.There may be one or two things that your designer/developer cannot do, but for the most part you should be able to find a reasonably-priced professional who can handle just about everything.
10.A key to evaluating the performance of your website is to have a system in place that measures the activity on your website which ensures that you can measure the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts.
