What do you look for in a web designer

[WelshPixels]

As a freelance web designer I am interested in what people look for in a web designer and in peoples experiences of other web designers.

Forgive me if this is the wrong place to post this question but I couldn’t think of any where else to put it.

As most of you have already got a web sites, what did you look for when you were looking for a web designer?

Were your expectations for your web site different from what you got? Was it better or worse?

Any comments on this is more than welcome

Thanks

[Jayne]

He must be tall, good looking with a great sence of humour :lol: (only kidding)


How I made my mind up in the end was the web designers site, I picked the one I liked the look of, I then contacted the host/designer and he was a nice bloke, so I had a site done.

To me the look of a site is more important that anything else...Sorry SEO people, don't have a go at me :lol: I like sites that are pleasing to the eye.

Jayne

[Enigma121]

To me the look of a site is more important that anything else...Sorry SEO people, don't have a go at me :lol: I like sites that are pleasing to the eye.

To be fair Jayne, people put information on web sites for many different reasons. If you are looking simply to supplement mail or telephone advertising then a highly graphical site might be exactly what you need. You don't need your customer support pages to be ranking at #1 in the search engines.

The bottom line is that MOST customers are only using the web to attract more business. It's a means to an end. With this in mind, overlooking the traffic that a search engine / SEO can pull in is a big gamble.

The ideal of course is a site which is SEO and still looks great. It's amazing what can be achieved, but you must bear in mind that this takes time and thus costs more money than a "images only" site.

[Jayne]

Hi,

When I had my site done I knew nothing about SEO. I was telling him how I picked my designer. There are others out their like I was, green as grass, so they would probably do the same as me and pick the best looking site.

Jayne :D

[Enigma121]

No, no Jayne. Don't take my comments the wrong way. Your feedback is very important to us as web designers too.

Our own site is SEO optimised but to be honest at the moment it could look better. We are therefore considering a graphical makeover and your comment has made my mind up on this one.

[Jayne]

Hi,

I didn't take your comments the wrong way...only be worried if I don't give you a smiley face :D I'm fine while i'm smiling :lol:

Jayne

[JoyDivision]

Hopefully my sites will both look good, be fully accessible and have good SEO. I will be honest and say that SEO is not one of my areas of expertise though as there is far more to it than just making a site comply with standards.

Certainly a boring looking site that is produced to all the standards is probably not going to be a good product to market your business.

Having said that my mum can now spot badly made websites and she isn't a technical person at all.

I think the trick is to produce a design breif to standards rather than modifying the brief to fit the standards. I know that is often easier said than done though.

[mattk]

How I made my mind up in the end was the web designers site, I picked the one I liked the look of, I then contacted the host/designer and he was a nice bloke, so I had a site done.

Jayne
A very, very good way to choose a designer. Doing this and word of mouth are by far the best ways.

Steer well clear of cold calls, someone "promising" to get you to #1 in Google or someone claiming to have membership of professional bodies! I've seen firsthand the damage an "expert" can do to a good site.

[JoyDivision]

What about mail drops would you say to avoid them? I am planning to use that as one of my methods of advertisng.

The only problem with purely going off how a site looks is a site can look good but be awful. For example it could have frames, images for links etc, the site would be highly inaccessible and would never really get good google rankings.

So you have to be able to look a bit beyond how a site simply looks.

I agree with your google comment though, I find that claim rather stupid and web developers that claim to get you to number one are asking for trouble.

Of course web developers should do some SEO in the hope of getting to number one in google though :p

[mattk]

Maildrops, hmm, not sure. I'd still say the best way is word of mouth. Obviously, this makes it very difficult if you're just starting out and have little or no portfolio.

[DeveloperBloke]

i have run my own development business for the past 4 years

heres what i have seen (this si all in my exeprience)

all advertising is crap (yellow pages, paper, radio, mail drops). i say radio is crap, it is good to get people to know who you are, but you dont get any business directly

fact is, every business out there will know another businesses who has a website, and they will ask them, and go with their suggestion. people like a trust lead. its the only way you will get business 98% of the time. there are loads of designers out there

dont bull ****. be completely honest with your clients. dont patronise them, dont confuse them with tecchy speak, just listen and say if you can do it. you must brush up on your inter persoanl skills, and copme across as a pro, (even if your not). study development processes so you can plan properly, clients hate it being late.

what i did to get into it, was find a business that you know and do them a site for peanuts. Then, get networking with them and their clients, you will find more work.

train yourself to work in many different areas. i am a programmer, designer, database administrator, flasher, evrything i need to build complex web solutions. saves you over heads as you can do everything and you can make a few beans doing larger sites

its hard to get into, but once you do, if you are good, then you will have no problem

i now work for big big compnaies doing consultancy, pays loads, but i had to start with the smaller businesses working for peanuts for a couple of years

hope thsi helps you

j

[JoyDivision]

I will have about three websites in my portfolio but its still not enough. I will ask my cousin if he wants a cheap site doing, if I can get well in with the Halifax traders it might be a good start. Its a long way from home but its only 45 minutes on the train.

Networking is going to my biggest problem, I have already made a few contacts but as I am not trading yet its very hard. I hope to attend some of the small business events once I start trading.

Thankfully my other business is very different so that should bring in the money while I am slowly building up customers for my web devepment business (my real passion).

[DeveloperBloke]

good luck to you