Your website is your digital storefront.
While only a limited amount of people will come across your bricks and mortar premises, literally anyone who has internet access can potentially see your website.
So, it needs to be good.
Unfortunately finding the right web designer that is a good fit with you, your business and the website you want isn’t always easy.
When it comes to hiring a web designer there are a few things that you should think about.
First things first, what have they done in the past?
One thing to look for is the diversity in their portfolio. Have they got bespoke designs with different elements or are they very much all the same? You’ll want your website to be distinctive, to stand out and you probably want something built that is unique to your business.
Can the designer do that? Does their portfolio show that they have a wide range of abilities? This is perhaps one of the most important things to consider when looking for someone to design your website.
Setting your budget from the outside is vital.
Web design projects can over budget. Things change as the project goes on and you need to mitigate for this. Not being open about your budget also has a detrimental impact on your relationship with your web designer too.
Be upfront with what you can afford and base your choice of web designer around this. Also remember that you need to have a bit of a ‘buffer’ in case things
OK, you and your web designer don’t need to be best friends. You don’t even need to be friends at all.
However, you do need to get along.
Imagine this scenario. If whoever is in charge of coordinating a new website design is a micromanaging but the external web designer is more laid back then is that relationship going to be a successful one? The answer is probably not. You don’t have to agree on everything however if you have two completely different personalities and approaches to work then it might be best considering someone else.
Finally, you need to think about what happens to your site once it is up and running.
You have your brand new spanking website, it works great and looks even better. What happens when something goes wrong further down the line? Being able to update the content on the site with your own staff is one thing however when the plugins or modules need installed or when the CMS version you have needs updated do you have the skills in-house to do this?
Check to make sure that the web designer can offer support going forward and how much this will cost as it will need to be factored in the budget that we mentioned above.
Hiring a web designer for the first time is taking a step into the unknown.
As long as you are upfront about what you need, how much your budget is and the relationship that you will have with the designer then you will stand a good chance of having a successful partnership and a fantastic website.