How To Choose A Web Designer
July 30, 2009 at 10:01 am
I’m sharing my thoughts on how to choose a good web designer because in the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that there seems to be a lack of ability to sort the cowboys from the indians:
- A designer being put forward as a ‘web expert’ for a legal case had a site with over 300 html errors, incomplete metadata, and no clear understanding of user focused design.
- Delegates at the Microsoft Mix Essentials Conference were hung up on this issue in the Q&A after Sabrina Dent’s talk.
- Popularity of Tenderme.ie where people are selecting designers based on (lowest) price. Those kinds of races to the bottom can only end in tears – client is unhappy with their site (you pay peanuts, you get monkeys), and the designer is unhappy because the client is most likely demanding more than their meagre quote allows.
So it’s about time ’someone who knows’ shares a few tips on how to choose a web designer.
1. What do you want? Design, or Design & Build?
Are you looking for a nicely designed portfolio site to show off your services and encourage interested parties to make contact? Are you looking to sell product online in which case you require an ecommerce site? It’s very important to know what it is you want to do, and what is the primary call to action for people who land on your site.
For larger sites that have more than one inside page design, I like to break them up and give the design work to a designer and the build work to a developer. In my experience, designers that are excellent at the front end colour/font/imagery/style part of the project are not that great on development, ie. the coding. Similarly, you can always spot a site that’s been done (I don’t say designed) by a developer because they tend to be blocky, linear and not very user focused. When you break up the project, you can be sure that both front end and back end will be beautiful!
Another important decision to take is whether to go for a freelancer or a company. Price can come into this as freelancers are often a little cheaper than a company that has overheads and staff and tax and so on. However, you run the risk of a freelancer being flakey. What if they decide to up and leave in the middle of your project? This happened to me a few years ago when I had an early Ruby on Rails developer working on a social networking site. This flakey guy disappeared in the middle of the project and I had to scramble to find developers to take over the project at an exorbitant cost. It was probably the most stressful time ever of running my business, it cost me a lot of money, and it nearly cost me a friendship as the client in this case was a friend. I learned my lesson then not to use freelancers. I used to make a couple of exceptions to this rule, but those exceptions (who are truly exceptional and definitely not flakey) have recently jumped back into paid employment and stopped freelancing once recession hit.
2. Establishing a long list
Have a look around for web designers. Take recommendations from friends and colleagues. Establish a long list. Now, look at those designer’s sites and go through their portfolios to see who will make it to your short list. Don’t bother being impressed by testimonials for they are merely the words that clients spout when a gun is put to their head; or sometimes they may be written by the designer and the client merely approves. Look instead at the designer’s portfolio:
- Do you see a diverse style? That can be a good thing, but be careful that it’s not just fashion! You don’t want to go for a designer whose designs will date.
- Do you see a similar style? That’s OK provided you like the style, the colour palette, fonts, etc. And know that if you go to that designer you can expect something similar to what you’re seeing already. Don’t go to a candy coloured designer looking for dark.
- Visit every site in the portfolio and for God’s sake, click into the site and don’t just form your opinion based on the home page! A good site will have a compelling home page whose function it is to entice you into the site. Inside pages have a different function, for they are there to convey information and convey calls to action. Are the sites doing this? Or does it all look very samey once you get off the home page?
- When you land on the home page, do you immediately know what the site is about? Does it answer the questions: who/what/where/how? Who is this site from? What do they do? Where are they based? How can they help me? If the design doesn’t do this, then, for all the flash elements, and moody imagery, it’s not a success – move on. Web design is about conveying messaging – quickly, and hopefully, delightfully.
- Now sharpen your eye and look for attention to detail – look out for continuity of style in even the tiniest buttons, edging, images. Everything should work well together and work hard to convey a message, ie. the objective of the site.
3. Putting your short list through their paces
There are a variety of web developer toolbars out there that you can download for free and add to your browser. I use this one for Firefox, it sits just above my tabs and allows me to check the following:
- HTML and CSS validation. The W3C lays down guidelines for how to use html and css. Running these tests on a website will show you how many errors are contained in the code. A good way of getting under the bonnet, and a must for anyone considering the low cost tenderme type of designer. Often these sites will look OK on the front end, but will be held together with sticky tape on the back end. That is not what you want. If the code of your site is messy, Google spiders will not be able to come in and spin their magic. What’s the point of having a site that can’t be optimised? Believe me, I have had to hold the hand of many people over the years who came to me with a website done by a cheap designer that they are unhappy with. The problem is that it’s often cheaper to start all over again in these cases than try to make good come out of bad. Beware – if you go for the cheapest end of the market, you could end up paying twice.
- Search Engine friendliness. First of all, don’t expect your web designer to get you a high ranking on Google – unless they are a search engine specialist as well. But do expect them to deliver a site that is created in a search engine friendly way, ie. text and not images are used for important content, meta data is populated, and different meta data is used for every page, internal links hyperlink keyword-ridden text, and not ‘click here’
- Test the sites on different browsers (ie. look at it on Firefox and on Internet Explorer.) If you have access to different browser versions, all the better. Look at the site on different operating systems – check it at home on your mac, look at it at work on your pc. And finally, check how the site looks in different screen sizes.
- Download speed. I use this because it’s one of the tools in the toolbar. Obviously you want your site to be fast to download. And you’d think that most sites would be, but it’s surprising how even the huge budget sites such as some of Ireland’s mobile phone companies take ages to download. Below are the stats for my site, they are good and what you should be aiming for:
4. And now for the money bit
The brief. Write down what you want your site to do. Try and include all the features that you’ve got in your head – such as google maps, interactive forms, flash elements, etc. If you don’t say these now, don’t be surprised when the designer asks you for more money during the project. If you haven’t got the language to describe what you want, show what you want! Provide links to sites you’ve seen that you love and say why. While it can be helpful sometimes to show sites you don’t like, it’s probably better to focus on the positive!
Invite your shortlist to quote for the work. If it’s a small enough project, such as a standard 10-15 page site, then you can expect designers to quote for free. If you are constructing a larger site that requires specification and more planning before a quote can be made, then it’s reasonable for the designer to charge you for their time in meetings and planning and specs. Sometimes this can take a couple of days. What I tend to do is charge for half the time, and absorb the other half as a marketing cost.
When reviewing the quotes, try to be sure that you’re comparing like with like. Don’t just go for the lowest price as that can sometimes contain hidden extras, such as a ‘requirement’ to take that web designer’s hosting package. This amazes me how certain web design companies in Dublin charge astronomical amounts for a commodity like hosting – and people pay it! Do a search for ‘web hosting ireland’, check out the prices and see if you are being ripped off. Are all the quotes including VAT?
Insist on a contract. This doesn’t have to be High Court approved, just a simple confirmation of the quote including payment dates and you should also be looking to retain the copyright on the site once it’s complete. Again, some cowboy designers try to retain copyright and then charge an annual fee to clients to use their own site!! Yes. It happens. It’s a jungle out there! Know that it’s common practice in the web design industry to charge a deposit – sometimes up to 50%. You wouldn’t expect your architect to design your whole house and only get paid at the end? Well same goes for all design. Deposits keep small businesses afloat and you shouldn’t have a problem paying for something you’ve contracted someone to do.
5. Get started
When you’ve made your decision, get started quickly. You’ve got a good awareness of the designer’s style, you’ve agreed a price, so there’s nothing to hold you back. Try and keep a momentum going as designers are human and it’s hard to revisit a design if it has been left to languish for weeks or months. So make time in your diary, give feedback on designs quickly. Your initial gut feel is usually right.
I hope this is helpful for people who are about to embark on a web design project. I know it can be difficult to buy web design for the first time. And with the increased number of crocodiles out there in that web design jungle you’ve got to be careful, keep your wits about you, and go in with knowledge!
Brightspark offers an unusual web design service. We take the pain out of the process by working with you to identify your needs and to set the site’s objective. We can bring ideas to you that will make your site sing. After all, our job is to be on top of what’s happening; we share that with you. Then, when we’ve established a brief, we invite Brightspark approved designers to quote for your work. Our panel of designers are all exceptionally talented, we’ve worked with them over many years. And prices range from the budget designs right up to award-winning excellence. We enjoy great rates from our designers and we pass these on to you.
If you’d like to talk to us about your web project, contact us - but no… first check out our portfolio!
Tags: how to buy web design, how to choose a web designer, web design ireland
Intertrade Ireland Spammers Or Just Thick?
July 28, 2009 at 12:19 pm
In 2006 I attended an Intertrade Ireland conference. It wasn’t that suited to my business. (=euphemism for “I didn’t get a single piece of business let alone request for proposal out of it”) And I normally score quite high at those kind of gigs.
Since then, every year Intertrade Ireland sends me emails. I have tried so many times to have my name removed from their list. I have to do this by emailing them directly as they do not have an unsubscribe link on their emails.
I’m not interested. They are just costing themselves money emailing me. And my inactivity is affecting their stats.
Now again I’ve just received another email in from them as it’s that time of year again. I think I will share with everyone the proof from last year that I truly did unsubscribe.
Started off by asking them to remove me:
Intertrade Ireland Spam Email
Received a rather sarky reply from Intertrade Ireland:
Intertrade Ireland Spam Email
To which I replied:
Now they are at it again:
This kind of thing really pisses me off.
How many times do I have to clearly ask to be removed from the Intertrade Ireland list?
Are they thick? Do they not care that they are spamming me?
Or do they think ’sure we’ll email everyone on the database and see what response we get’?
Well here’s my response: TAKE MY NAME & EMAIL OFF YOUR DATABASE I’M NOT INTERESTED.
(And I think I’ve done awfully well to keep expletives out of this post now that we’ve got a blasphemy law and all)
Tags: Intertrade Ireland, Seedcorn Spam
Remove Twitter Anxiety Now
July 27, 2009 at 7:32 am
Countless articles have been written in mainstream media about Twitter; some journalists love it, others hate it (or don’t get it?). Numerous discussions on LinkedIn, many self proclaimed ’social media experts’ give seminars on how to Twitter. Even my 76 year old mother knows about it – God forbid she asks me to set her up with an account!
I believe that all this hype is putting pressure on business people about Twitter. I’m asked at least 5 times a week, “should we be on Twitter?”.
The best person to answer that is yourself.
Why don’t you have a listen to what’s being said on Twitter about you, your business, and your industry?
- If there’s a lot of talk, and you feel you have something to say, then get on Twitter. Set yourself up with an account and take part in the conversation.
- If there’s not a lot of talk, you’ve had a listen and put your fears to rest, so next time you read about Twitter you can salve your fears by knowing that you’ve had a look and it’s not for you.
One of the best applications I’ve come across recently for listening to Twitter is Twilert.
Twilert is a bit temperamental; I wouldn’t rely on it. I have searches set up for IKEA and I get about half of them.
The reason I like it is because it sends an email (at a frequency selected by yourself) with a summary of what’s being said on Twitter. It fits in with the email mindset that most corporates still hold. What I really like is that you can set it to monitor a specific geographic location. This means you can monitor the buzz in Ireland only, or UK, or the whole world if you wish – or even within a 5km radius of where are.
How To Set Up A Twilert
- Register on Twilert. It’s free.
- Once in, select the ‘advanced settings’ button under the main box:
- Type in the words you want to track. It’s a good idea to set up different alerts for your name, your company name, generic keywords relating to your industry, product names, competitor names, and any other ‘need words’ you come up with. By ‘need words’ I mean words that people would type when they need your product (they just don’t know it yet!).
- Select the frequency of send. You can even choose a time of day. I’d recommend mid afternoon so you have time to respond to any tweets on the same day if you want to.
- To limit the results to Irish-only buzz, type in your location under Places – make sure you type “Dublin Ireland” so you’re not stuck with that other Dublin in the US. Then select what radius you want. For all of Ireland, select “within 500km”.
- For this first raising of the periscope, let’s listen to everything. Later you can limit the results to positive or negative, or even asking a question. You may choose to set up separate alerts that get sent to different parts of your organisation, so that ‘asking a question’ tweets go to sales, ‘negative’ tweets go to customer service. But that will come later.
- Hit “Create A Twilert” and you’re done.
What You Can Do Now
- Shortly you will receive a Twilert in your inbox. This will show you all the mentions of your keyword in your specified location over the past 24 hours.
- I set up one using the keyword “eircom” just to see what people are saying. Predictably, it’s not all good:
- Click the links to visit the Twitter profile of who’s doing the talking (or tweeting).
- If you were eircom and you were using Twitter properly, you could be using Twitter in so many ways. Reputation management, sales, customer service. What do you think Ann Donnelly’s response would be if eircom tweeted her with a special offer to keep her business? I think she’d be bowled over. Vodafone Ireland is already using Twitter very effectively for just over a year now. Check their profile here.
Very quickly you will be able to decide if Twitter is a place you need to be.
It’s like blogging. When I’m doing blogging training, I make the point that before you set yourself up with a blog and start writing, it’s a good idea to first read blogs, comment a bit, and then go. By reading and commenting on blogs you are taking part in the conversation. And that is what blogging is. Therefore you are a blogger even before you get your own blog.
Similarly, with Twitter, you can listen and watch first before you jump in and set up an account and take part regularly. Adding Twitter to your communications mix does require commitment and resourcing, albeit nothing too onerous. My advice is to go ahead and have a listen. If you find your customers are on there talking about you, then get in touch and we can have a chat about the next steps for you.
Tags: buzz monitoring, twilert, Twitter
Simple Assembly Me Hole
July 25, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Dedicated to IKEA virgins, this is my latest venture: Simple Assembly Me Hole.
Launching on Monday to coincide with the IKEA Dublin launch, I set it up for people like me. I’d be just the one to go in for a milk jug and come out with a sofa, wardrobe, and a new set of pots and pans… but I’d hate having to face the assembly nightmare back home.
Paul Cullen in today’s Irish Times makes me shudder when he refers to how:
We have strugged to assemble flatpack furniture with nothing more than an Allen key, a wordless set of instructions and a passing acquaintance with DIY.
I know I’m not alone! Judging by the comments on Twitter, which range from “flatpack furniture assembly should be included in pre-marriage courses” to “a day in IKEA, a man’s idea of hell. Getting it home and having to assemble it, Dante’s inferno”.
Simple Assembly Me Hole offers the following services:
- Assembly of Ikea furniture – at a very reasonable €30 per item. Other flatpack services insofar as they exist charge by the hour.
- Installation of Ikea kitchens – again at very reasonable rates.
- Delivery – we’ll deliver next day for all orders before noon and again good rates. I think people will find they’ll have to wait 7 days for Ikea to deliver
Key benefits:
- While there are already a number of flatpack furniture assembly guys, they tend to be one man with a van – so you may find you have to wait til he gets around to you. I’ve assembled and vetted a team of highly skilled carpenters, cabinet makers and fitters dotted all around the city, so if we get an order in Lucan, our man in Lucan will be there in a jiffy.
- Another key differentiator is that we charge a fixed flat fee per item. All of the others charge based on time. Therefore it is in our interests to get the job done as quickly as possible, whereas competitors might be tempted to push things into the ’second hour’.
- Our delivery service offers next day delivery for bookings made before noon. Ikea delivers alright, but experience overseas shows that you’ll be waiting up to 7 days for your item to be delivered.
Who Needs Us?
- Singles who don’t own a own toolbox (and don’t want to!)
- Couples who are DIY-challenged
- Expectant parents wanting to kit out baby’s new room safely
- Property owners who need to kit out apartments for rental
- Business owners who can’t afford the downtime of assembling new office furniture when it arrives
Is this you? If wobbly coffee tables and sloping bookshelves are a feature of your life, then visit “Simple Assembly Me Hole.com” on Monday and book in for a low cost solution to your needs.
If you’d like to keep updated on our progress, I’ll be posting regular updates to the Facebook Fan Page and on Twitter. So join us over there – and don’t forget to tell people!
Simple Assembly Me Hole
Promote your Page too
Tags: flatpack furniture assembly, IKEA Dublin delivery, IKEA furniture assembly, IKEA kitchens installation, Simple Assembly Me Hole
Facebook Anthropology
July 24, 2009 at 3:56 pm
When you look at your list of Facebook friends, do you ever notice any trends in how people represent themselves? I’ve spotted some Facebook Pic Trends which I’ll share with you below. Please feel free to message/comment with your own, I’ll add them to the post, and we’ll make the definitive resource for Facebook Anthropology:
Exhibit A is for Australians:
All the ones I know have amazing model shots book quality pics. The boys are buff, you can see the oil shimmering off their bodies. The ladeez are all blonde and gorgeous, or smouldering brunettes with a story…
B is for Bohoe (he gets a category all to himself)
He’s a photographer, designer, event promoter… you don’t want to compare your pics to his because you’ll end up feeling seriously depressed.
Exhibit C is for Cool Chicks about Town:
Their avatars change often; their profiles are always talk of the latest festival, opening, or other cool event.
Mammys, New Daddys:
Marrieds (no I didn’t say Smug Marrieds, Stu did… and he is one!)
Still Green For Iran (get with the programme, Iran was so last month)
The “obviously taken with an iSight” or other web cam
Lovers of illustration / Logo-ified
Comedians
Arty Black & White
Cartoon-ified
(delving for photo examples here)
Finally, my thanks to the good people on Twitter who came up with the word “Anthropology” after my brain had ceased to function. And to @bohoe and @irishstu for some additions.
Tags: Facebook Anthropology
iQ In The Nick Of Time
July 23, 2009 at 8:00 am
I’m delighted to be one of the 4 bloggers who were selected to drive a Toyota Iq around for the next 6 months. Call me a blog whore if you want, but for me this opportunity came exactly at the right time.
Take a look at my insurance disk:
Note to my MX5: my beloved, you won’t be neglected. Angel has a nice warm garage and will mind you. I’ll come visit on weekends when I want to go far far away.
Twitter Nostalgia
July 21, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I’ve detected quite a lot of Twitter nostalgia of late. Last week’s flavour of the moment, When Did You Join Twitter tool got me thinking about this little ‘review piece’ that we did one Thursday afternoon quite some time ago. We used to have “R&D Thursdays” in which we’d research new things that took our fancy on the web. In this one we review the following three ‘new’ sites:
- Spanglish (one we did for a client so a blatant plug!)
- Stumble Upon
It’s gas. I can’t believe I wore my hair like that only 2 years ago!
Tags: nostalgia, spanglish, stumbleupon, Twitter, youtube
Generation M
July 15, 2009 at 8:36 am
Every now and then I come across something that speaks the truth, that is bubbling over with idealism. In recent times, I’ve forgotten to be so idealistic, so I’m grateful to Umar Haque for reminding me.
Introducing The Generation M Manifesto
A plea to America’s leaders (and we know they’re not politicians) to allow us to bring about change. Read it yourself here.
He pretty much sums up the widening gap between ‘old school’ and new. The digital divide. The gap between “Edgelanders” (Stowe Boyd’s term) and those still living in the middle of the mainstream.
It’s inspiring to read these thoughts on an American blog (Harvard Business Review) and to know that these criticisms of big business versus small, of anti-community versus authenticity are happening across the pond. Maybe some day they might take hold.
In the meantime, read on. And open your mind.
Tags: Gen M, Generation M Manifesto, Harvard Business Review
E-Tenders Fail
July 14, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Some time last year I signed up for the e-tenders email. I thought I might have a hope in hell of winning business from the public sector. I applied for a few, didn’t get them, but when I saw who got them, I decided it’s not worth my while – I don’t have a track record of delivering public sector projects, so no matter how good my work is (and how superior it is to some of the project winners), I can forget about it.
It is not possible to simply click and remove yourself from the e-tenders email.
What? A Government approved vehicle is breaking the law?
Shocking but true.
The email ends with an old school double line – no mention of unsubscribe button here:
A quick shimmy on over to the e-tenders website, and it’s a little opaque. You’d expect you could stop your email newsletter by clicking on Notice Alerts Service. That is the logical place where you would manage your subscriptions to alerts. But no. You have to click on your personal details, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and that’s where you can stop things being sent to you.
At first I didn’t get this, so I hit contact us, asked them to remove me, and got the ‘we will respond to this in one working day.” That gives them til Wed at 6pm. Let’s see if they live up to that promise.
In the meantime, here’s to another government website that doesn’t adhere to its own rules. Should we let our friends at the Data Protection Commissioners know? 
Tags: e-tenders fail, irish government websites, public sector tendering process
Augmented Reality: Coming Soon To A Hand Near You
July 14, 2009 at 10:55 am
Just back from London where there’s a lot of talk about social and mobile, two areas that are about to explode according to my sources! One veteran who’s been involved in this space since 1994 as one of the earliest Flash developers said that it’s the ‘first time in 10 years’ she’s so excited about what’s happening in the space. More about social later in the week, but first mobile.
Mobile is not just about getting Twitter on your iPhone, telling your friends to ‘come join me on Qik’. There are way more viable commercial applications going on. One that has particularly captured my imagination is Augmented Reality (see what wikipedia says).
Skip back to 1999 when I first started working in the online space. The ultimate dream back then was to have special offers ‘beamed’ at you as you walk past expensive department stores, or specialist stores in your city. It never quite happened… until now. It’s just about to.
What Is Augmented Reality (AR)?
It’s the blending of what you see around you with digital information onto your mobile phone. The real world mixed with digital into your hand. Augmented reality is already in use in movies, games, military, and medicine. Now it’s coming to a mobile near you. It’s about to explode with a whole host of commercial applications.
Good example of how it will be used in advertising. Thanks to this excellent article from The Next Web where I picked up the vid.
At Wimbledon, Mobilizy worked with IBM to develop an application for the T-Mobile G1 phone that displayed real-time information about matches in progress, as well as dining and transportation options for fans.
Interesting Commercial Applications
Applications like Layar and Wikitude.me, as well as projects in the research stage at Nokia, use a phone’s global positioning technology to determine a person’s location and use the phone’s compass to discern the direction the device is pointed. In this way, the phone can guess what the user is seeing. The augmented-reality application then pulls in information about points of interest in that sight line and displays it on top of the camera view.
Layar is a free download for people in Amsterdam to look through the camera on their phones and see information about nearby restaurants, ATM’s, and available jobs displayed in front of buildings that house them. The information is provided by companies like Hyves, the Dutch social networking site, and ING, the financial services company. The businesses pay a fee to SPRXmobile, the privately held company based in Amsterdam that developed Layar. (That was lifted from the New York Times at the weekend – note this article was in the business section, not entertainment or technology)
I see huge potential for location-based advertising, travel devices, training and education. It will even bring a whole new dimension to working out those opaque Ikea assembly instructions!
Imagine standing on O’Connell Street Dublin. Point your mobile at the GPO and get a history of the building, architectural notes, opening hours, etc. Turn around to face Clerys and you could receive special offers and price comparisons on in-store items. Fancy a bite to eat? Get restaurant reviews, directions on how to get there, even touch the phone icon to book ahead for a good table. Introducing Augmented Reality for tourists will add a whole new dimension to their experience. It will put control back in the hands of the tourist who can guide their own journey around the city. It will make tour guides defunct! It is my belief that Dublin lends itself particularly well to this as the city centre is small enough to get mapped easily. And we are a tech friendly lot – yes really!
Here’s a basic iPhone app for getting tube directions (the sound’s a bit poor):
Gimicky Use in Media
Here’s a gimicky use of Augmented Reality that Radio 1 did last year. They were giving out tickets for a free concert. Anyone who didn’t get a ticket got a commiseration email with a special code in it. Print the code, hold it in front of the computer and hey presto – a band in your hand. Skip to 44 seconds to see it in action:
Sony PSP Augmented Reality Game “Invizimals”
Due to be launched in August for the Christmas ‘09 market, Invizimals is a new hunt and capture game that utilises augmented reality. Developed for PSP, you can have a sneak preview here:
While gaming, education, and advertising lend themselves particularly to AR, my only concern is around imagination. What happens to our children’s imaginations when their consumption of books and magazines displays augmented reality versions of the characters?
PS – read Neville Hobson’s analysis of the Morgan Stanley intern report on what’s hot for teens. Or if you haven’t got the time, let me tell you:
What is Hot?
- Anything with a touch screen is desirable.
- Mobile phones with large capacities for music.
- Portable devices that can connect to the internet (iPhones)
- Really big tellies
What Is Not?
- Anything with wires
- Phones with black and white screens
- Clunky ‘brick’ phones
- Devices with less than ten-hour battery life
Tags: Augmented Reality, Layar, Travel & Tourism
