Maryrose Lyons blogging since 2003...

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!

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Tags: how to buy web design, how to choose a web designer, web design ireland