Your business website is an extremely important aspect of your business success in today’s modern age. Here are 7 tips to help in hiring a website designer…
50 milliseconds.
That’s the amount of time users normally take to form an opinion about your website. If your site is poorly designed, you can forget them staying long.
The pressure to have an aesthetically-pleasing site can take a toll. How do you know if yours is good enough? It doesn’t look like your competitor’s, but is that a bad thing?
Rather than take on all that responsibility yourself (after all, you have better things to worry about), you’ll benefit from hiring a website designer. These miracle-workers will see that you have an amazing website without doing any of the work.
Sounds like a dream, right? That’s why we’ll go over the questions to ask when finding the best designer for you and your business.
Let’s get started!
Do You Offer Ongoing Support?
Before you even start thinking of what you want for your site, you need to think of what happens after it’s already designed. You could have the most beautiful website in the world but if something were to go wrong (like one page won’t load correctly), are you responsible?
Knowing beforehand what kind of ongoing support they offer after all is said and done can be the difference between a great website designer and one that doesn’t care. You shouldn’t be left in the dust when something suddenly stops working.
How Long Does the Process Take?
As a business owner, you can’t sit around waiting for your site to be designed. You want to offer your customers a launch date so they’re not left in the dark.
You should feel the same about the website designer. You want them to be able to give you a reasonable amount of time that it’ll take to get your site finished.
If they dance around the topic, that’s a red flag. While not everyone is perfect and things get delayed, they should have a good estimation of the average time it takes from start to finish.
In the case that they don’t meet their deadline, ask what’ll happen. Will you get a partial refund? Or perhaps they’ll throw in free incentives.
Either way, it’s good to know what time to expect your site to be completed and what action they’ll take should they miss that deadline.
What Will Be Discussed During the Consultation?
Before blindly hiring a website designer, opt for a consultation first. Most of them are free and they work as an interview to see if the two of you are a good fit.
Getting some insight into how the consultation will go allows you to see how they get to know you more as a business owner. You’re more than just a logo and a color palette and the designer you choose should understand that.
However, if you don’t have a solid brand in place, it’s best to learn more about building one first. This will ensure you can deliver clear communication as to what you’re all about to the designer. In turn, they’ll be able to give you a gorgeous site that’s all about the message you want to convey through branding.
What Other Services Do You Provide?
Reputable website designers offer more than just one service. Most of the time, they’ll provide stock photos, copywriting, SEO, and even app development.
It makes it easier when you can get this all done by one company as it saves money. You don’t have to worry about outsourcing other services that you can get done with the designer.
Not only that but the lines of communication won’t get blurred. If you chose to outsource SEO, for example, they’d have to work with the designer to ensure all the copywriting provided is keyword-rich and search engine friendly. Doing that will only slow down production time.
If the website designer you’re thinking of hiring doesn’t offer any additional services, see if they collaborate with other companies. This will make it easier to get everything you want for your site without stepping on the designer’s toes.
Do You Offer Payment Plans?
Websites that are custom don’t come cheap. Some even go as far into the quadruple-digits range.
If you can’t shell out all of that at once, ask if they offer payment plans. This’ll help you to divide up the payments to save some cash for your other business needs.
Unfortunately, if they don’t offer some kind of payment plan, you’ll have to choose another designer or pay it all outright.
How Are the Services Priced?
Whether they offer other services or just a custom website, it’s useful to know their price structure. Do they charge hourly or is it a fixed price? Do they charge extra for features pertaining to the website?
How they price their services is often a reflection of the kind of quality they provide. Those who charge cheaply may not give you the best quality. Ones who charge an arm and a leg might be high-quality, but is it worth draining your bank account?
When in doubt, look at their online reviews. See the kind of quality they provide for the prices they charge.
Will My Website Be Mobile-Friendly?
We’re living in the digital age so that means if your site isn’t accessible on mobile devices, you can forget gaining a lot of traffic and sales. Online presence is crucial nowadays so you’ll want to know beforehand if the website designer you’re thinking of hiring will make your site mobile-friendly.
Nothing is worse than clicking on a website that displays incorrectly on smaller screens. Smartphones are one thing, but you can’t forget about tablets. That said, make sure the designer has experience with making websites responsive for mobile devices.
Follow These Tips on Hiring a Website Designer
You’ve built your company from the ground up. Now it’s time to reflect that hard work by hiring a website designer that’ll create a gorgeous site for you. After all, it’ll save you time you could be spending on other business aspects.
Looking for more articles like this one? Check out our category on websites!