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So You're Hiring a Web Designer—You Have the Right to Demand
these 7 Perks
by Mitone Griffith
Published on this site: April 13th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month...
Whether you're hiring a designer who has created 10 sites or 1000
sites for other businesses, there are 7 things every website designer
should do for you.
- Be wary of companies who charge by the hour and don't
put on a cap! There isn't a regulated industry standard
in fees. So websites can easily end up costing you a small
fortune. Ask for a flat fee if possible—you'll know
exactly what you're paying up front. It's common to pay
for 50% down, and in certain cases, when working with businesses
online; you may need to pay the whole flat fee down. This
is perfectly acceptable. You wouldn't order books from Amazon
and wait to pay for them when they got there!
- Try to get a turnaround time in writing. It is up to
you to bring as much information as possible to your designer.
This will make the design process go much faster. You can't
just go and say "make a website for me" and expect
your designer to know what to put on your website! The more
you bring to the table, the faster your designer can work.
And the faster you respond to proofs, the faster your site
will be active and live! Depending on your designer's workload,
it could take anywhere from 1 week to 3 weeks to finish
the design of your site.
- Original custom designs are always best for branding
your image. If your designer works exclusively from pre-designed
templates, with no customization at all, you will not have
as professional a site as if you received 100% customized
work. Make sure you understand how your website designer
creates websites.
- How much flexibility will you have in the future? The
best aspect of websites is that they are dynamic—or
should be. Print advertising is static. But you can constantly
update your website as your company grows. How fast and
easy can your designer make changes to your site? Is she
building in functions to make these future changes possible?
- Does your designer optimize your pages and submit them
to search engines? If they don't then you will end up having
to pay for this service, or figure out how to do it yourself.
A web designer may not have 100% of the SEO tools out there,
but at the very least, your website designer should create
your meta tags, make sure your keywords are sprinkled throughout
your content and at least submit your site to the basic
directories and engines.
- Is your web designer just designing your pages and leaving
the domain name and hosting up to you? Beware of this. Sometimes
their quotes only include the design itself. If you don't
understand domain names and hosting, you need to make sure
your webmaster purchases your domain for you and sets up
your hosting—and then manages this year after year.
Websites with top level domain names (.com, .net, .org)
are taken more seriously. So it wouldn't make much sense
to have a professionally designed site hosted on a free
site like Geocities.
- Does your webmaster offer a guarantee? If you can't get
your designer to create a look that you like, will you be
able to get your money back? Find out if this is in your
contract before you fork over your cash.
Mitoné Griffith has designed websites since 1999.
Her streamlined 24 Hour Website Wizard assists you in creating
your website in less time than it takes to get a book on HTML
to ship from Amazon. Complete and custom websites overnight.
Visit http://24hourwebsitewizard.com
to learn more, or email to
[email protected]
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