How to pick a web designer

Written by NMI consulting for Business Link

Let's not start with an explanation of the World Wide Web, we all appreciate how it's changing the way we do business and how it represents one of the most exciting marketing advantages to businesses today!

If you have a small business or entrepreneurial spirit, you've already identified that if you don't have a web site, you need one. If you already have a web site - then your with an elite group of some few million others and probably fast becoming dissatisfied with your web marketing performance and like a more effective on-line presence.

Identifying that you need an on-line presence is one thing, actually creating the right site, promoting it, developing and maintaining it as a meaningful marketing tool is quite a different proposition.

Time for our 1st reality check - there are lots of skill sets involved in creating effective web sites, are you gifted with these and do you really have the necessary time to do them yourself?

IF you do and can then you've probably looking at buying one of the dozens of "web page builder" programs out there like; Front-Page, Page-Mill, Hot Dog Pro, Dream Weaver, Go-Live Studio or Home-Page?

First please consider, these are simply design tools without any skilled direction and like thousands of other people, using the same toolkit for their basic web sites, you're running the risk of looking just like everyone else!

Before you proceed - step back and ask yourself; if you really have the clarity of purpose to define your business vision, mission and to establish a measurement of web performance in what your setting out to achieve? A successful web site that meets your business objectives should probably;

Reflect your vision of exactly how you work with your customers
Help you pick up some new ones

Your vision needs to vividly detail how your going to create a dynamic web platform thats going to really grow your business.

Read on to find out:

How to find a web developer?
How to avoid being ripped off or end up with an inferior site?

So why am I not going to build my web site all by myself?
Check the health of your nation. Are you looking at the right thing when you set out to build your own web site?
Consider your web site design
Whats the bigger picture here; When & How?
Audience
More big picture; Who & What?
Mind Map or list out your design / content
Be S.M.A.R.T
Finding the designer for you
Do you take this web designer - to have and to 'hold-harmless?
Price
Where to stick the knife - when to twist!
Designed by committee
So many opinions - so few decisions!
Contractual and legal issues
What do you mean - ITS NOT YOUR FAULT?
Getting what you want and paying for it
The devil is still in the details!

So why am I not going to build my web site all by myself?

DIY Web Design

Let's clarify some of the reasons we think you might want to not create your web site all by yourself:

You'd use a mechanic to fix the strange clunking noise your car's making right?
Experts do a better job than amateurs and if they fail to deliver you get your money back!

Professional web designers spend their days creating web sites, building pages, tuning web sites for better click through performance, worrying about accessibility issues, keeping up on the latest's compliance issues, browsers, the latest online products, services, design styles and more.

Tip 1: Don't hire a web development company that doesn't have a great web site. If they're not walking the talk, they're most probably not the help you'll need!

Time is probably your next key issue. Effective businesses are run by people who stay focused on the critical issues of their businesses - products, pricing, location - and delegate other tasks to staff or outsource.

Creating a great web site involves time. Creating branding / logos, page and banner designs, content development through fine-tuning key performance factors. Good web designers save you loads of time and help you focus on your key business goals.

Consider your web site design

The critical first step in this process of identifying and hiring a web designer is for you to have already thought about various key aspects of the site you'd like to create. Have in mind that the best and most useful web sites are information-centric not technology feature wizzywig-pan galactic centric.

You'll just want your customers to come to your site, and then you'll want them to keep coming back to it because they find your site a real valuable asset.

So you need to Identify:

Information - like any good marketing brochure, an informational web site answers all possible questions and concerns about your product or service, with testimonials from customers and feedback forms to solicit input from future customers.

Fun & interactive - static sites are now looking rather yesterday's Web. Think about more interactive site functionality. Interactivity can be simple; search systems, useful up-to-date news of relevance to your industry or sophisticated such as a live database that plugs into your sales (e-commerce), accounts, production systems. Just avoid designing an overly busy site where people coming to play games and just have fun, rather than to find out / buy your products and services. Maintain in your outline plan how you might measure the tangible benefits and performance goals your web site will deliver.

Keeping your site up-to-date - is one of the biggest challenges to businesses. Unfortunately outsourcing this doesn't simplify matters. Getting someone else to keep up-to-date on the key issues of your industry is asking a lot. How might they get the knowledge or expertise to weed out irrelevant data from critical? So if you have to do it yourself, how are you or your staff going to a) find the time and b) use the required technology to keep your site up-to-date?

Web based income - Online sales are a growing reality of today's web. Implementing a secure real- time transaction system is not complex anymore and represents another route to market for many companies.

Audience

Spend some time identifying the target audience for your web site.

"Everyone" is not going to help your web designer create the right look for your site, so consider carefully some demographic questions.

To help try putting these in order of most-to-least important:

Existing customers - this is a great way to retain your brand loyalty with your current customers; you can aim to give them a site that builds on the good will you're delivering through your professional services.

Prospective customers - people who will come across your site due to a marketing effort or search engine listing who are looking for your particular product or service. Hear you need to both sell your product/service and establish your credibility.

Customers of your competitors - face it, one key way to grow business is to steer your competitors clients to your side. This means having your site directly comparing your service or product performance with your competitors.

Locals only - your neighborhood - you're a local business, so focuses on the needs of your local community. Provide value add information; local resources, maps, point to other local sites.

Kids & Grown ups - Identify if your visitors are ‘young at heart' or really just ‘young' children may represent your key audience, or perhaps you seek families? This can differentiate you from business-to-business markets.

Professionals only - if your customers are experts in a specific field your site design must reflect their needs and interests.

Identify who you really want to attract to your site and what kind of information you going to need to add.

Mind Map or list out your design / content

Gather your key stakeholders with an interest or contribution to add to your web site; Sales, Marketing, Support, Admin, Accounts etc and brain storm all the kinds of things you'll want on your web site.

Create lists or mind map key themes and expand each with as much detail and specifics as you can manage.

This will give you a guide as to:

Content areas and potential number of pages,
Specific types of information plus specifications for any interactive areas such as:
- Database lookup
- content searching
- feedback forms
- online registration for customers
- file types and documentation
- download areas
- Online transaction requirements

Benchmarks and Competitors.

One of the best things that you can also do to guide your web designer is exploring other sites on the web and get ideas for your own.

List web addresses and note what you do and don't like about these sites.

Finding the designer for you

You've identified:

Benchmark sites & competitors
You have a contents guide
You now your target audience
You have goals re outline design, branding and image

OK so now it's time to find the right individual or company to hire:

Your best bet is good old fashioned word-of-mouth. Ask friends and colleagues that have a great web site how they went about created them?

If you're going to search for someone online it's probably best to find a local company, web design does lend itself to virtual (home) office set up's which may or may not discredit them however, it is most useful to be able to get face to face.

Does their own site come up in a Google search for "Web Design" and your town, if they can't do it for themselves they can't do if for you.

Good Questions to Ask:

Ask the owners of good sites you've seen and like if they found building them a good experience or not?
Ask how much they paid for their site?

Costs - you can guarantee that pricing will vary considerably, by the myriad of variables involved, consider:

Where will your site be hosted on their server or your own?
Are you going to be responsible for month-to-month maintenance?
Do you already have artwork, logo's branding they can use?
Do you already have content available - in good copy format?

The two key areas mostly affecting pricing are overall size of the project and the level of complexity (interactive sections - interacting with customers, online purchasing etc)

Price

Negotiating with web designers

It's guaranteed that the more interactivity you require from your web site, the more your site will cost.

Most web site design proposals will be based on a per project cost, however you might receive some based upon an hourly or per-page rate. Question:

Per-page pricing equally has problems, as this suggests that designers believe that all pages will take a same amount of time to produce.
Hourly charges unless you have a viable way to gauging how quickly work is happening or you can define a not-to-exceed price.

We recommend a per-project basis and ensure everything is spelled out in a detailed proposal or service level agreement.

Finally consider negotiating the following:

Try to find a supplier with a content management system that will allow you to do as much of the web site content and updating as you can use your own in-house resources.
Edit your printed materials and images to suit on line use, hire a local kid with computer literacy to type in and prepare your materials. This can ease the web designers' work load and save you all time and money.
If you already have artwork, branding and logos, strap lines etc that you like, share it with your designer at the outset and save more time and money in not re-inventing the wheel.
Negotiate a reduction in fees in return for letting your designer 'brand' your site with their own logo at the bottom of each page. This is effectively advertising on well-designed sites and a channel for attaining future business.

Good practice

Use a project management approach, make yourself or a nominated person you're your company available and empowered to ensure that your web designer has full run of your resources and approvals to do their job. This may include access to your computer systems if they need to work on a database / interface systems, translate documents or access original materials images or programs.

One thing that really slows down a web designer or any outsourced professional is waiting for feedback. If it's called for respond quickly and clearly.

Also if you ask your designer to register a domain name for your company (www.mycompany.com), make sure that you specify, in your service level agreement that you be listed as the ‘administrative contact' for the domain record. Otherwise, you're likely to find that your designer will own your domain and if you come to switch to another provider at a later date you might have to buy your domain back - a common and potentially awkward situation.

Designed by committee

Another factor to consider is how much time will be investing at your end in the design and commissioning of your web site.

Will you require that every nuance of the design, content and layout must be approved by a number of stakeholders or by committee?

If this is likely then you must factor in a lot of extra time.

One possible tool to consider using is Engage Thoughtware (see our links section light relief for details)

Contractual and legal issues

Big words give little words take away

If your web designer can't write a proposal that easily and quickly addresses your needs, they are likely to have trouble helping you do the same with your web-site. Check out their track record and look for evidence that they are delivering a good ROI (return on investment) with on other company's projects. And see if they are any good with follow-up? Bad follow-up is likely to mean bad implementation.

If your project is worth more than a £1000, making sure that you put in place a service level agreement to protects you or consider using a lawyer to write a contract for you.

Investigate and understand details such as intellectual property ownership, and responsibilities regarding the deliverable outcomes / penalties around failure to deliver.

Ownership of materials must be clearly understood. For example, is the new logo design going to be your property at the end of the contract or theirs? Your designer must clearly define that artwork they use is royalty / license free (i.e. it wasn't stolen from another site); finally agree who will own any special software coding or special functions if they are developed specifically for you.

Getting what you want and paying for it

You're armed with a good site design document, you've added some possible timelines to the project it's turned into a 'request for proposals' and now you have some bids to go through.

Check out the web designer / firms own web site. If it's not a very good visually impacting site, if it doesn't have great functionally, useful and an effective information about their business (Like this paper for example) then you need to wonder about their marketing skills and ability to really help you develop a quality site.
Check out the web sites they've created and speak to some of the people at those companies who have experienced working with the site designer / team. If you don't hear wonderful things about timeliness, responsiveness and support then move on.

When you've looked at your options and selected a provider, ensure that you agree to a detailed proposal or establish you own Service Level Agreement. This will detail exactly what each party is going to do, when (with deadlines perhaps for the site going up / live logically) and payments linked to outcomes or penalties for missing deadlines.

It may need to detail or put a cap on the price of key components such as:

Design,
Branding logo's artwork (if applicable),
Content placement and or copy writing
Contact forms
Membership systems
E commerce
Bespoke programs
Training
SEO
Pay per click

This gets round the problem of designers who are very positive about their ability to turn things around quickly actually getting bogged down and underestimated the complexity of what you're actually seeking. Mostly it stops them suddenly wishing to charge you extra for something you've already specified.

Most web design firms and individuals like to be paid in stages.

50% on commissioning - 50% when the site goes live,
Or thirds, 1/3 upon signing, 1/3 when at major milestone 1/3 when the site is done.

You can usually negotiate this if you're uncomfortable with paying more than costs up front. Professionalism counts for more than saving a few £ on a cheaper bid.