With so many website designers to choose from, finding a good designer can be tricky. But hiring the perfect web designer for your needs can be as simple as preparing a brief or scope of works, a checklist of questions to ask, and doing some homework before you even start looking. The brief can be just a few paragraphs, but you want to be as specific as you can about what you want. The better you define it, the more likely the end result will be what you want.
Some of the questions you should ask your prospective web designer include,
- Is your design work SEO optimised? – you don’t want to hire an SEO specialist as well
- Does your design fit around the content? – you don’t want your content to fit around the design. The content is much more important than the design. People buy words
- How will the design create credibility for your market- you don’t really want ‘cool’
- Will your designer find and register a good domain name? – the right name can be crucial
- Will the designer provide hosting? – is he tied to a hosting provider or can he shop around?
- Will his design use a CMS(Content Management System)? – you will need this to make changes, unless you want to keep paying him every time you make a change to your site
But before you even start looking for a designer, you need to do some homework. I know, we all hate homework. But you will be glad you did. Start by learning about keyword research. You will need this for natural search engine inclusion. Then visit different hosting providers and compare features and costs. You need to understand the jargon. I recommend you learn about CMS. For example, wordpress is a CMS. It allows anyone to publish content to a website without becoming a coding guru. Last but not least, investigate how design contest sites work, like 99 designs. You can get designers competing for your business.
Preparation is key and it’s well worth the effort.
