You’re looking for a new design for your website and realize that there are more options than you can count. How in the world do you choose one of over the other? Here are some things that I believe are important for you to look for in hiring a designer for your next project.
Past Designs
This is kinda an obvious thing to look for, but the really important thing to look for is that the designer has made sites that match your desired style. Don’t ask a designer to go out of their comfort zone to create you something that they’ve never done before. There are many designers out there and it’s better to have one that has made designs like you would want to avoid the headaches.
Marketing Experience
Do they understand marketing and what drives sales? Personally, a website that doesn’t have a call to action is a waste of time. A designer without marketing experience probably won’t understand the importance of the call to action in the site like one with marketing experience.
SEO Knowledge
Does the designer understand SEO and how site design affects SEO? Is their portfolio filled with sites that have tons of flash and image only layouts without text? If so, that’s an easy way to spot designer that don’t have a clue about SEO.
Clean Code?
How clean is the code of their past sites? Go to the sites they’ve designed and look at the page source and css file. Even if you don’t know how to read the code, you’ll know if it’s well organized or not. That’s important if you ever need to hire someone else in the future to do something to the website’s design.
These are some things I’d look for if I were about to hire a new web design guy. What do you look for?
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All these are important for any web designer, I am actually close to think that designer & developer is one man job regarding to nowadays jobs!
Let us not forget about price. I've had sites designed for upwards of $3,000 for a simple sales page when I could have had thing done on elance for $50! Lesson learned. Good recommendations though.
Number One on my list when hiring a web design guy or gal (or anyone else for that matter) is: Are they a good communicator?
I want regualar updates, I want to know what's happening, I want to be able to have my input without my web designer ignoring me becasue they think they know better. Of course I'll listen to their advice and guidance and expertise, but they have to listen to what I want too dammit!
Thankfully, it does seem like the world of web design is no longer ruled by angry geeks and Incrediboys; either that or they've started hiring communication coaches!
RT @BrendanWenzel: 4 Things to Look for in a Web Designer http://bit.ly/a1XnSs
Clean code and SEO-optimized designs are the two most important things I'd look out for. Having an SEO-Optimized design helps with search engine rankings and clean code greatly affects page load times.
Oh, and I wouldn't miss checking out his/her portfolio.
Emmanuel.
Good tips. I do some marketing for my clients and sometimes they ask me to build their sites for them which I hate. I usually refer them to someone and I'll add these things on the list of things they should be looking for in a designer.
Thanks for these great tips. Most of us tend to forget about the clean code…
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