This article is about 16 Tips To Hiring The Right Website Designer For Your Business Needs.
I understand that small business owners wear many hats when it comes to running their business from Management, bookkeeping, customer service, HR, marketing, and many more. There comes a time when you will need to hire someone to help with some of these things like turning over your online marketing to someone with experience so it can free up some of your time.
When looking for the right designer for your brochure website, Blog, or ecommerce platforms. Many of this platform claim to be easy to use for nontechnical folks. However, most folks are still going to need some design help.
Most service provider just needs a brochure style website to explain and express their business to their customer. Small to big businesses will need to spend from 2% to 20% of the gross income on their website and online ads like Facebook, Instagram and google maps. Email marketing is only needed when the business is selling more than one service or product. It takes and ad about 27 days for most customer to decide to buy the service or product unless there are impulse buyers.
When it comes to websites ranking on the first page of any search engine, remember that you are competing with the world for the number one spot for the keyword you are going after.
There are a lot of designers that will tell you they can get you one the first page of google in no time at all. The true is they can if you are the only one going after the one keyword. When everyone is going after the same keyword it makes it hard to get on the first page of google. Now for service providers you should with out much trouble rank on the first page in the business location.
You also have to watch out for designers that uses more then one Google My Business for your business that does not have a physical address in multiple towns. These designers will go against Google’s guidelines by selling you a GMB for each city or suburb you service. When Google catches on they will remove your listing on Google maps.
Then there are those that will try and sell you a one-page website for each city you serve. Leaving you paying more then you need to. All that needs to be done is a SEO optimize city page for the city you serve.
So how do you find the right website designer for your needs? Who will understand your business and goals, with out charging you tens of thousands of dollars?
1. Look for a website designer that is local to you. In today’s website design market, you can hire designers from all over the world. Keep this in mind when you are hire a designer for your website. Try to find one that is local to you. So, you can meet face to face. This will make it easy to get to know each other.
2. Host with a hosting company that is in the USA or country that offers a good recognizable website security. With so many website design companies from all over the world designing remotely. You need to make sure the site is hosted local this make a big deal with the site speed. In today’s world of websites bring hacked you will need a good site security to keep it safe from malware and spam.
3. Get referrals from the website designer. Be sure to speak with at least two former or current clients. You can get the phone number from the website designer or you can go to Facebook and message the one’s who have left a review.
4. Find websites you like to show the designer to see if they can do the same thing on your site. Go search the internet for websites to find some you like the design of. This will help you when it’s time to hire a designer for your new or redesign site. This will also let you know if the website designer is any good at what they do.
5. Make sure you own the site and hosting. Just incase you have a falling out with the designer or they go out of business. The site belongs to your business. Before you hire any designer, ask who owns your site a make sure to set up the hosting yourself. Ask the designer to help you set up the hosting if you need help doing so. This Is so important to know upfront, because not owning your owning design and content of your website can prevent you from getting investment capital, hurt you when you go to sell you business, or will sink the ranking your site has earned when you have to start over. On top of all this it can take up 30 days to transfer your site from one host to another, meaning your site is down until the transfer is complete.
6. What services do they offer? Does you Website designer offer more then building a website. Do they offer Hosting, E-mail Domain, Domain, E-mail marketing with forms for your site, Business Office 365, Facebook ads, and many more?
7. How do they market your services? I know we have been talking about hire a good designer for you site, but not all designers offer online advertising or market. Make sure who every you hire they know how to market for your website. Just having a website is not going to get you the leads you need to sell your services. You will need city pages, Facebook ads, and Google My Business marketing to get them.
8. Do they test to see how the ad is running or performing to get the leads you need? Testing comes in many forms. Your will need your site tested to see how the site is performing on all of the search engines, audience performance, page speed, and many more. This is where A/B testing comes in to help get the most out of your site. It is very important that you are your designer looks at this every 27 days to see how your site is doing. Not all designer offer this so make sure to find one that does.
9. Check out the design work. Ask to see their website design portfolio of their current work. This will help you determine if their work is any good. Keep in mind that you can tell if they are any good or up to date with the new styles of website design. This may be hard to believe, but there are designer out there that still only do websites design from the 90s and they have not leaned the new codes or the new look of 2019.
10. Discuss how the work will be done (local or outsourced) and who will be doing it. A lot of us outsourced some of the services we offer to you like content writers, plugins, Themes, and images. As for myself I do not hire just anyone I use only the best when it comes to hiring subs. Make sure your website designer does the same.
11. Find out if the designer can meet your deadline or the time it will take to get the job done. Realistically it can take a week to two months to complete a website. Most of us are busy with many of our clients and it may be a month before we can get to your design. During that time a website designer should be in contact with you about your design needs.
12. Have and set a realistic budget so you will know what to expect to pay. Most basic, 5 to 10 page website will cost you between $500.00 to $12,000.00. Some website agency will break this down over a 12-month time fame. Some charge by the job with how much time it takes. Keep in mind that hosting, content, blog post, product page for ecommerce is not included in website design.
13. Where to find a good website designer from your local area. There are many whys to find a good designer near you. While you are looking for design inspiration you can look to see who designed the site, usually you can find it at the bottom of the site. You can do a search for website designer on google, but keep in mind that you my have to put the city name in the search to find some in your town. Also be aware that even though they are list in the search they still my not be from your town or city.
14. Look to hire an online advertising agency over just a website designer. When it comes to your website design its ok to hire just a designer to do this, but to get the best out of the money you are putting in to your site the site has to be tested to make sure it is performing will. You will also need online ads to get people to visit your site. All of this will build trust with your audience. This is where a good online advertising agency come in to play.
15. What type of hosting will I need? Each type of business will need a different type of hosting plan for your website. As you grow and get more visit to your site you will have to move to a high resource plan to support the high demands on your site. Make sure you take the time to go over this, so you don’t buy the wrong plan.
16. What type of plugins will I need? Think about what you want the site to do. You may want pop-ups, scheduling calendar, event, and there are many more. Try to think of this before you hire a web designer and make sure he can add what you want on your site.
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. Please leave a comment below of your experience of hiring a website designer or if I missed anything of the things you need to know be for your hire a website designer.