So You Wanna Have a Website... 6 Critical Tips to Finding a Good Website Designer

When I first went into business I dreamed long and hard about creating my websites long before I did anything about it. After all, it was going to showcase my best asset — me! Not only did I need to create my website but, given my business, I needed to learn along the way. So granted, that web developer needed to not just create a website — they had to be a teacher as well. And a teacher to a fairly challenging student at that.

I finally found one on Craigs List who was more than willing to tackle both birds with one stone. Unfortunately he was in Malta. That didn’t seem like too big a hurdle, what with Skype and all, I tried to convince mysel. Well guess what: six hours time difference is, in fact, a big pain in the patooty when you’re ready to get to work and he’s sleeping like a baby thousands of miles away. And, oh! It probably would have made sense to talk money, to really talk money ahead of time. Woops!

WD (web designer) #2 promised to be different. Young, hip, local enough and I’d seen a portfolio of his work. It was good. And he was willing to do it for a great price provided I paid the entire thing up front. Bad lesson… and never to be found again. Woops again!

By the time WD 3 was hired I was scraping bottom. He taught web design at a local college, was more than willing to work for the price we’d agreed upon and seemed eager for the work. Seemed, being the operative word. My time line was really important; I had a business to run. Where. Was. He????? It is not OK for a web designer — or anyone in business for that matter — to ignore time lines and get back to you three days later. Over and over. Not OK. 

So, 3 strikes and I was out. It was an exhausting, expensive, long lesson of both how I was not going to run my business and conversely, how I was.

Web Design, like anything else, is a business, and needs to be treated as such, with clear guidelines, expectations, tracking, time lines and costs, all up front, prior to signing any contract. And, oh-make sure there IS a contract. Learn from my mistakes.

Here are 6 Key Issues to ask, beforehand, when looking for a good web designer:

1. Go local, and look at their portfolios. Check out the many developers out there and then go to their websites and look at their online portfolios, or ask for the URLs of their previous work. If you don’t like their particular style, keep on searching. Surprisingly, there are a sizeable number of developers who have less than spectacular personal websites. Some developers produce sites that all look similar (cookie cutter). Personally, I like developers who have eclectic and mixed portfolios… probably indicative of their ability to adapt to the tastes of different clients?
2. Interview over coffee (avoid beer). I highly recommend that you meet with a minimum of three local web developers for coffee. Interviewing them over the phone is no good. You’re looking to form a long and beautiful business relationship with someone you can trust. Your gut is usually right (sans beer).
3. Good two way communication is critical. Test each developer with follow up questions and see how long they take to get back to you. If they are slow to respond when looking for your business, what will they be like once they have your deposit? Also, ask them what system they use for sharing drafts with you and tracking correspondence.
4. Make sure they have experience designing optimized websites. (Make sure they know what that word means.) An optimized website is a website that has been built with not only design, functionality and content in mind, but one that has been built to be ranked highly in a search, whether it be Google, Bing, or any of the smaller search engines. You have just shelled out thousands of dollars to have a website created. What good does it do you to have a beautiful website online that no one can see because it is on page 12 of a search engine? Multiple studies have shown that most folks won’t look beyond page two of a search engine for what they are searching for. Make sure your website designer has extensive background in SEO and is staying current, as it is a constantly evolving science. Ask to see their potfolio as there are many so called “SEO experts” out there and it is not an inezpensive endeavor. Plus, it costs much more to go back after the fact and “optimize” a website than it does to hire a designer who will incorporate the key SEO techniques as the site is being developed.
5. Ensure that you’ll be able to update your site yourself. Gone are the days of calling up your web designer every time you want to make changes to your website. With Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla, WordPress and Drupal readily available (and free) to the world, there’s not a lot of need for the average small business owner to get a hand-coded website. If you’re getting an e-commerce site, I recommend Adobe Catalyst, Magento, Word Press Woothemes, or (maybe) osCommerce. All of these CMS offerings give the business owner easy access to products, content and pricing. Simply log in, find your page and change it. Easy peasy. If your designer tells you that future updates will require you to call them or submit a ticket, find another one. Obviously there are reasons to have an ongoing maintenance agreement with your developer, but these days, much can be done on your own, saving you a bundle
6. Cost and timeline. It should all be outlined clearly upfront and no one should be asking for the full payment prior to doing the work. I mean, come on. Websites are not an overnight project. They can take anywhere between four and eight weeks depending on complexity and other factors. Payments are usually broken down into a deposit and final balance due at completion of project. Some very flexible WDs might even agree to three payments to ensure that the process is going smoothly.

Every business owner wants to invest their money wisely. Nothing is worse than launching a new website and watching your traffic go down the drain. There’s a lot to know about website design, the quirks that will get you into trouble and the right things to ask. Hopefully this short list will help you avoid those designers that offer SEO, but really know nothing about it. Good sites take time, so be patient. Also, if you don’t know what you want in your new website before getting into the whole development process, then most likely you will end up with something you don’t like, plus be a few thousand dollars lighter (but that’s a whole other article).

Suzen Pettit, a longtime Brookfield resident, is principal at Omaginarium and Omagine Health, a marketing firm specializing in growing small businesses and medical practices by creating search engine optimized websites, internet marketing, social media marketing, and SEO 

Contact Suzen at 203-733-8578 or email her at Suzen@omaginarium.com.