Google for web designers or web design companies and you’ll get millions of results for companies that promise very similar things: on-time delivery, low cost, search engine optimization, and cross-browser compatibility, etc. Now if everything is so good, why? Are there so many crappy websites you could ask? Here are a few ratings to help you distinguish a good web designer from a bad one.
Nice portfolio
A good portfolio shows creativity, variety in style, and most importantly, has examples of real work from clients and not just school-specific work. Make sure the general style of the web designer in your portfolio matches what you’re looking for. Test the website you launched earlier to make sure it’s easy to use, bug free, suitable for your target market, and loads fast.
A great portfolio always trumps design education or experience. Web designers with too much experience can be configured in their own way and are less open to new ideas or trends. And just because someone has taken a few design classes doesn’t mean they have a good eye for it. We have come across many websites that offer web design services with terrible websites.
Customer service
No matter how great your designer or agency is, if they can’t respond to your calls or emails on time during business hours, they likely won’t be able to meet your deadlines. This could spell the death of your business if your project is pressing for something like a product launch. Some freelance web designers are enlightened, which means they have full-time jobs and take on odd projects here and there to earn some extra money. Be careful around those people because they will likely not be around when your project goes wrong, forcing you to lose your deposit.
Skills required
Whoever chooses must master the web technologies that their project requires. If you need Flash for animated clips, make sure your web developer is proficient in Flash Actionscripting 3.0. If you want to turn your website into a CMS, make sure they understand well the CMS of your choice and the web technologies that support it. Most open source CMS are controlled by PHP. It is always better to hire an expert who can excel at the things you need than an expert in all trades who is mediocre at everything. You can usually judge this based on your online portfolio.
Your timeline matches your timeline
All projects have a deadline or time slot that you want to complete. Inexperienced web designers often quote overly optimistic deadlines. No matter how simple the design or redesign of your website is, it is almost impossible for the design process (from concept to completion) to take less than two weeks because there will always be revisions. I always laugh when potential customers email me estimating that their new website is very basic and won’t take more than 2 days. It’s much more professional to quote a longer timeline and deliver earlier than expected. However, if your web designer says it’s going to take longer than your competition, they’re probably part-time.
Full service
Design companies often offer full service because they need a team of developers, designers, and marketing experts. Full service means they offer comprehensive web solutions like SEO, e-commerce, branding, mobile compatibility and social media marketing, all in one place. You will rarely find a web designer who is an expert in all of these categories, so some companies hire a design firm if they have the budget.
Communication skills
Communication skills are just as important as design and programming skills because if your web designer communicates with poor grammar or misspellings, so will your website. Do they express the problem well? Can you translate complex technical jargon into simple terms? You can easily assess your communication skills through initial calls, emails and project proposals.
Marketing / SEO experience
What good is your website if your target market can’t find it? Your web designer or design company should understand how to promote it. If you find your web designer via Google with industry-specific keywords, then you should know something about SEO. Here are other simple SEO techniques that your web designer should implement to build his web presence:
- Generate new and relevant content for your target market with blog
- Write meta title and descriptive tag
- Include your keyword search terms in your title and description (H1 and H2 tags, respectively)
- Sprinkle keyword search terms throughout your content.
- Create sitemaps for search engines to crawl
- Add your website to the online business directory
- For more SEO strategies, check out my blog post on how to generate high quality web traffic.
Customer reference
Ask for customer references and be sure to contact them. Ask your clients if they are responding, on time and within budget. Some web design companies find work through freelance websites like Guru, where you can find reviews.
Presence on social networks
Social media helps you respond to people talking about your brand and understand how they view your company. There are so many social networks, but the ones to keep an eye on are Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. A good practice is to post a status update every time you publish a new blog post or web content.
Expenditure estimates
It is very important to consider all of the above and then consider the cost or budget if they all fit. The cheapest quotes are rarely the best.
Jeanette Kwok Web Design is a full-service design agency with clients in the US, Canada and Europe offering:
- Web page design
- Joomla template design
- WordPress blog theme design
- Drupal theme design (new service)
- Majento e-commerce template design (new service)
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Mobile website
- Web maintenance
We collaborate our in-house knowledge and experience with industry web experts such as copywriters, photographers, programmers, animators and other creative talents to clearly communicate your company message to your target market and help you achieve your business goals. We know our bandwidth, so we only accept design projects if we can complete them within your schedule and budget. Unlike the general approach taken by large design companies, we seek to understand your business in order to develop your online presence to meet all your communication goals and thereby crush the competition.