The Pace of Business today is Positively SupersonicSandeepa singh
January 30, 2009
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There doesn’t seem to be enough time for anything anymore, and
businesses of all sizes are working harder and faster all the time.
It’s
important to work smarter, too. And that means when you have to choose
an important vendor for an essential service, you need to slow down and
make a deliberate, careful decision. This is particularly important
when you are getting ready to put your company’s face on the World Wide
Web in a new or newly-refurbished web site. Before listing the ten key
things to look for in a good web designer, let’s define a few terms.
Even though you may encounter variants on the name – like web
developer, web artist, webmaster and so forth – we’re talking about an
individual who, alone or with some assistance, is going to “get you up
and running.” This means more than simple design.
You may need
someone who can help you conceive and write copy. You may need someone
who can plan smart site structure. You may need help getting a domain
registered, files uploaded, e-mail accounts set up, and other technical
details. You will definitely need someone who can do just about
anything or quickly find out how, or have an associate who can at the
ready.
With these caveats, and serious encouragement to shop
around for price and professionalism, here are the ten things to look
for, in rough order of importance:
1) Experience
You
will need someone with all the techniques, tools and tricks that will
help you prepare your web site and accomplish your online goals. You
should confirm that the candidate knows the entire alphabet soup of
protocols, web markup languages and coding utilities: HTML, XML, CSS,
PHP and so on. Ask all prospects for a portfolio, ask if they can “hand
code,” find out how many years of experience each has, etc.
When
you interview designers, on the phone and/or in person, you will get
these answers swiftly enough. But take due time to get more important
insights as to the individual’s character, level of expertise – and how
well your personalities mesh. You will be working closely together,
after all.
2) Customer service orientation
As important
as experience is a mindset and attitude of making customer service a
priority. If a designer/developer is too busy to answer e-mails or
phone calls, will they be able to keep the production schedule? Ask for
references, and make a point of actually calling them. Ask the
prospect’s previous clients if the web developer was responsive, on
time and effective.
3) Original copy and graphics
Creating
professional and 100% original web graphics separates the adults from
the kids every time. Most anyone can do some “quick and dirty” copy
writing and slap it on a page with some pictures and hyperlinks. On the
other hand, a talented and veteran designer will demonstrate knowledge
of page layout, have a way with color and know how to place elements on
a page for best appearance and web site performance. Take a good look
at a number of the sites each prospect has built, and make sure no one
is using “templates” or “starter pages” that come with some software
programs or are available (even free) on the Internet.
4) Creativity
You
need to decide right away (before you even start talking to designers)
just how much the designer you find will be involved in the conceptual
process. Your designer may need to help you with some of the “big
picture” questions, such as marketing, web copy writing (for search
engines) and how to generate traffic. You want someone creative, but
not a “diva” who won’t follow instructions or work with your ideas to
bring them to fruition.
5) Marketing experience
The
easiest way to find out if your prospective web designers are good at
marketing web sites is to view their site and their portfolio. That you
are considering selecting them to design you site is a good first
indicator that their designs convert. You'll further want to insure
that you can find what you're looking for on their site quickly and
easily and that you can do the same on some of the sites in their
portfolio.
6) Cost
Pricing for a professional web site of
10-15 pages with the standard features runs all the way from $500 to
$5000. It may be that your idea is so complicated that you might have
to pay for an estimate. For a full picture of all the costs involved in
the project, ask for all the costs to be broken out individually –
domain name and hosting, graphic design work, marketing fees and web
development matters.You may need to place a deposit if the job is large
enough, and you should have all payment terms worked out before work
starts. You can work out an hourly rate, a flat fee or some combination
of the two. Leave nothing unstated or assumed: Get every detail in
writing, including deadlines and how many revisions are included.
7) Job timeline
After
you ask the developers how long the process will take, make a point of
asking references if the project was, in fact, completed on time. A
basic web site may take as little as a week, while more involved and
technically challenging sites could take a month or more. You need to
know what the real-world turnaround time is for the specific people you
are considering.
8) Communication skills
Don’t hire
anyone who insists on speaking to you in “computer-ese” or won’t
explain unknown terminology. You have to communicate with this person
about things that are important to your very survival, so you need to
be clear at all times. If you cannot establish a good working
relationship, it won’t matter if you have Leonardo Ad Vinci working on
your code, it just won’t work out.
9) Full service
There
may be one or two things that your designer/developer cannot do, but
for the most part you should be able to find a reasonably-priced
professional who can handle just about everything. If the designer
needs help installing a particularly complicated shopping cart, or your
site requires some heavy database programming, it is reasonable to
expect that your designer might need some assistance. All of this
should be spelled out in the pricing, of course (see #6, above), and
you should never be surprised by anything your designer is telling you.
If you are, you overlooked something in this list!
10) Availability
Are
these prospects full-time web professionals? Or are they moonlighting
from some other job, even a completely unrelated one? It may be that a
part-time web designer who’s working at McDonald’s really can do a
great job for you, but will he/she be available to meet with you during
normal business hours? No matter what decision you make – full-time
pro, part-timer or student – you must be able to get hold of your
designer.
Finally, do you homework before speaking with
anyone. You don’t need to be an expert – after all, you’re hiring help,
because you’re not – but you need to know enough to know what you’re
hearing. If you are uncertain of your own ability to keep on top of
what’s going on, get a friend with at least basic web knowledge to help
you locate, interview and assess candidates.
Use all of this
“head” knowledge to narrow down your list of candidates, but don’t be
afraid to use your intuition (“heart” knowledge) to get a feel for each
person’s honesty, integrity and character. Using this mix of study,
inquiry, discussion, and feel, you will start to develop judgments
about the candidates. Following this procedure thoroughly should result
in your finding a good match for your Internet needs.
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