What not to do when choosing a web designer

You will inevitably need to venture into the confusing world of web design, possibly without any idea of what to look for.

How you decide who to choose to build your site is entirely up to you, of course, but in this article I will explain a few common mistakes business owners make when selecting a web designer.

What not to look for:

1. The designer guarantees you a top spot in the search engines.

Many designers will try and lure you in with dubious promises – one of the most common being a guaranteed search engine ranking. It might seem hard to resist the urge to hire on this basis, but beware: search engines are mysterious creatures and keep their cards very close to their chests. Whilst people have been able to deduce what makes a site rank highly in the search engines, there are still an awful lot of variables that nobody can be sure of, and as such nothing can be guaranteed.

Like a well-written personal profile on a dating website will increase your attractiveness but not guarantee your success with the opposite sex, a search engine optimised site will just stack the odds heavily in your favour of your potential customers finding you online.

2. The designer offers you some free initial designs to help sway you.

It can be very tempting to agree for a designer to come up with some design concepts before you sign a contract. It’s a nice idea, but think of the implications: a designer will rarely be familiar enough with you or your business at this stage to be able to come up with a design that will accurately reflect your brand and your message.

I hope everyone reading this agrees with me when I say that there’s something not quite right about a designer willing to work with no guarantee of financial return. The designer’s portfolio should speak for itself, and speculative design work simply shouldn’t be required to convince you to hire someone.

3. The designer refuses to sign a contract:

A contract ought to be a no-brainer. Unfortunately many designers won’t require or ask for one, or may even flat-out refuse to sign one before working with you. Make sure everything is in writing, including exact project requirements, project, payment schedules, workflow, timescales, post-project maintenance, etc.

It’s not obligatory to hire a solicitor to write a contract for you – as long as everything is in writing from the start, both you and your designer are on a level playing field and both know exactly what to expect from the project.

What not to avoid:

1. The designer uses open-source software to build your site:

You may well feel cheated to find out that your designer is using open-source software to build your site. Open-source software is generally available free-of-charge, and this may raise a few questions about exactly where your money is going.

Open-source software is generally of very high quality. Take WordPress for example: a free, open-source website publishing platform which has been around since 2003. Since its initial launch, a very dedicated team of skilled volunteers spanning the globe has been contributing to its development and it now powers websites for the Daily Telegraph, 10 Downing Street, and the Wall Street Journal. Now you think about it, would you be opposed to your designer using the same platform to construct your site?

That being said, it would be perfectly reasonable to expect your designer to be up-front about what software he’s using and whether it does incur a charge or not. But don’t think that open-source software is inherently bad or not worth paying someone to harness for you.

2. The designer asks for an upfront payment before starting work:

It’s common practice for designers to request a deposit before commencing work. Generally this deposit will be between 30 and 50 per cent of the overall project cost. Your designer will most probably need a bit of cash to cover overheads incurred by the project such as subcontractors’ rates, stock photography, hosting fees, etc. And if you’re hiring a freelancer, he probably doesn’t like waiting the whole duration of a project before receiving any remuneration – he probably has a family to feed!

3. The designer demands content before starting work:

When you start working with a designer, you’re probably hoping that he/she can just get on with the work and you can worry about the content at a later stage. Any designer worth hiring will ask for at least some of the content upfront and then begin constructing your site. A well-designed site is one that has been designed with its content in mind from the outset, rather than one that has had its content written to fit the design.

Always go in with some idea about what you want to say on your website, and even if content is not requested straight away, give your designer as much as you can before he starts working. The quality of the resulting design will increase accordingly.

4. The designer hires subcontractors to help him/her:

This is a good thing. It usually means that your designer knows and recognises his shortcomings and cares enough about the quality of the end result to warrant hiring additional expertise to help him along the way. Of course, if he is outsourcing the entire project to a very cheap third party and acting as nothing more than a middleman, then your money could probably be put to better use elsewhere.