5 Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing a Web Designer
Choosing a web designer has grown to be very difficult. You can find all kind of types, prices, skills, and abilities. Everyone who can’t design their own website should seek professional help, but here are 5 mistakes to avoid when choosing your designer.
1. Choosing a designer who suggest flash intro pages or a ton of flash
I like flash websites. They are pretty, do cool things, and usually are very visually-stimulating, but this doesn’t work for anyone unless you are as big as, Coca-Cola, or you have $1 Million budget just for website promotion. Since most businesses don’t have budgets that big over even a 10-year span, you need a site that helps drive traffic for free.
A flash site can’t be read by search engine robots (the things that crawl your site and return what is on your site). These robots can only read html text in the form of titles, alternative text, body copy, and other elements that are not part of flash. In the end, flash is like one big picture on your site. It may look good, but that is all the search engines see it as.
2. Choose a designer that suggests you use frames
Once again, this is a search engine issue. Frames can hamper the search engine’s ability to follow your site, its navigation, and ultimately what you are all about. This is a good place to explain why search engines need to be able to figure out your site.
When a search engine crawls your site, it gets indexed along with all of your content. Then the search engine plugs your site into its extensive database, and when people conduct searches, your site gets inserted. Now there is a lot more to this topic, in fact an entire industry has spawned from this, but in a nut shell, you want it to be as easy as possible for search engines to find out what your site is about, and find your keywords as often as possible. If your designer wants to use frames, it is usually safe to bet that they will not be very good at setting your site up for good search engine optimization!
3. Use a template for your site
There are many great template sites available. Usually, you can purchase a template for under a $100. The biggest problem with using templates is the lack of consistency and branding. I worked with a fairly large company that should have employed a professional designer to build a site that carried their brand, but instead they used a template that was a far cry from anything consistent. You may save money by buying a template, but the money you will have to spend to compensate for lack of consistency will far outweigh the savings.
Another reason for avoiding templates is bulky images and flash. For one, you usually get a flash header or intro that is resource-heavy, and then you get stuck with a bunch of images for navigation, headers, and other important areas. As stated earlier, this will hinder your search engine rankings. You don’t want to have to pay for every visitor, so avoid simple mistakes on the front end.
4. Use a part-time designer
I have nothing against people that have two jobs or trying to make ends meet doing design part time. The problem with this situation as a client is time. When you deal with a part-time designer, they usually have an issue with finding the time. They have a main job that takes up their time 40+ hours a week, so they have to find time around that for your site. This usually means they will work on it on the weekends, at night for an hour or two, or some other random time. This drags out the time to complete your site. Instead of completing your project in 2 weeks, it takes 2 months or longer! When you work with someone that designs and develops full time, you get more time commitment, which means quicker completion.
5. Use your friend’s cousin’s friend from the gym to design your site
I have encountered many clients that started out working with someone they knew, but really didn’t know. Usually it is a friend of a friend or some other distant relationship that says they save them the client money. If the job gets done, because many times it never gets done, it takes a long time and the quality is sub-par. I am not shooting down the referral system, because I do very well with referrals, but you should do some homework on the referral before you jump into it. When someone says they can design a site for 1/6 of the cost you can get it anywhere, usually it is 1/6 of the quality and takes 6 times as long to complete. Get your referrals, but ask for more information. Don’t take everyone else’ word for it!
There are more mistakes that you should avoid when choosing a web designer, but these 5 are major issues to avoid. In today’s market, your website must be professional and useful. It needs to contain the proper SEO elements, and should be consistent with the rest of your marketing activities. In fact, in many instances, the web site should be the center of your marketing plans, so don’t try to go too cheap or too quick for the sake of getting a website up. Talk to a professional that can assist you through the process!
Nate Stockard
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