Before You Choose, How Do You Choose?
You want a web site, you have surfed the web and seen all the shiny sites out there and wish to follow suit with your own groundbreaking service. But where do you start? For many people, the web designer is the person to go to first.
Who Designs The Designers?
Web designers come in many shapes, sizes and flavours: from big companies specializing in their own themes and add-ons, and glossy porfolios, to private and freelance designers relying on work-for-hire.
Choosing the correct web design service for your own needs is as important as choosing your domain name and web host, and can become a costly exercise if you don’t know what kind of designer will suit your needs.
The professional website designer may do just that: design your site, no more and no less. This is their speciality, and you will have a funky looking set of web pages, but perhaps you need more. Other developers may include web design as part of a larger package: often these providers will be able to present a plan for web development, which will cover marketing, SEO and may even have suggestions that you yourself have not yet considered.
Consider Your Needs!
We all know the downside of shopping without a list: you get a lot of what what you want, but forget the things you need. Consider the type of website you want as the end product, and make achieving that site your aim. The smaller, private website designer or webmaster should be able to fulfil your requirements for a basic website layout and design. From this, websites can differ greatly, as landing pages for customers with simple contact and services information all the way to fully-functioning e-commerce sites, involving checkouts, payment options and so on. This now becomes a bigger job, almost a sliding scale from individual designer to web design company, although the individual may be able to afford you, their customer, a more personal (if not less expensive) experience.
Is Size Everything?
Any basic website still requires between 4 to 10 pages of content. A Welcome Page, About Page, Contact Page… and the more you may have to say (or sell) the more pages will be required. Clarity is king, but consider the cost per page of your project, even if the designer involved is charging by the hour. You may have your shopping list, but everyone must come within budget! The size (or depth) of your site may inform the costs involved, and these charges will change from web designer to web designer, big or small.
Shiny, Shiny Bells & Whistles!
So you have now decided what your website will look like, good, but what about those needs that are particular to your domain? Images, additional content, a forum, sign-up forms, videos… this is where the webmaster comes into his stride. The designer has made your site all lovely, now is the time to make it functional (and user-friendly!). As well as the customer-facing widgets and items, development now encompasses the unseen (Search Engine Optimization, Tags, Meta-This and Meta-That, link-building, social marketing…). If your designer, or design company, has offered these services, be sure to agree terms, or you will need a seperate developer for this part of the job.
Do Ask, Get Told
In conclusion, every site is unque, from design to need to execution. Open a dialogue with your chosen designer, and ask for input: they will have experience of other sites, and be able to share tweaks and tips that you may not have considered. Smaller web designers or webmasters/developers may be less expensive, but the design company will have a number of employees, each specializing in a different part of the design and development process. You may be able to strike up an excellent working relationship with a freelance developer, but on the other hand, a design company may offer better support. Perhaps you have a time constraint as well as budgetary constraints – this is something else that must be considered and discussed at the start of your project.
Best of luck!
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