IntuitiveDesigns

Here are some questions you may from a web designer once you have established who you are interested in working with.

1. If they are available and interested in working on your project (logically!).
2. If they have any other clients that are in your industry. A lot of times, it isn’t necessary for a designer to have experience in your industry because there should be a research phase where they study your industry before starting on your project, but some designers do cater to specific niches.
3. If they have a team of people and capacity cover your needs. Some designers are just one or two man shops, but work with other professionals to provide whole website solutions (programming, SEO, copywriting, photography, online marketing, etc.) It’s good to get a general idea of how they work so that you know what to expect.
4. What their process is. Are they willing to collaborate with you and keep you abreast of updates in a timely manner?
5. What information they need from you. Often designers will get back to you after reading your RFP document and have additional questions about your project.
6. Who will you be in contact with throughout the project? It’s good to know if you will be in contact directly with the project manager or the designer. You should expect to be in contact with just one person throughout the process in order to avoid unnecessary communication complications.
7. If they offer maintenance and training services. Some designers don’t handle maintenance after the project is done. If they don’t provide maintenance services, are they willing to train you to update and maintain your own site?
8. Will they provide ongoing support of your site after it has launched? If so, what is the support period for bugs and fixes?

That wraps up the planning your website series. If you have anything to add or any questions, please leave a comment below and discuss.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Part 1 – Before You Contact a Web Designer
Part 2 – Preparing Your RFP Document
Part 3 – Finding Potential Web Designers
Part 4 – What to look for in a Web Designer
Part 5 – Questions to ask your potential web designer

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer

Finding a good designer can be a daunting task. There are many many designers and it’s hard to differentiate one from the other based on work alone. Here are some things to look at when considering a web designer.

1. If you posted on a job board, did the designer follow your instructions and send you a response that indicated that they read and understood your ad thoroughly?
2. How does their own website look? Is it professional, presentable, and easy to use and understand? Did they design the site themselves or use an existing theme?
3. Their portfolio. Do they have a decent portfolio with sites with a wide range of styles and in different industries? A designer with a wide range of styles indicates that they search for the best solutions for each particular client.
4. Who are their clients? Do they have a decent list of clients and references that you can contact?
5. Testimonials. Do they have testimonials from reliable sources?
6. Are they easy to contact? Do they provide several methods of contact and make it easy for you to contact them?
7. How long have they been in business? Do they do web design full time or are they moonlighting?
8. Do they have information available about how they work? An outline of their process, what to expect from them, and their policies are good examples of things to look for.
9. Can they effectively communicate and back up their design choices? A good way to figure this out is looking for case studies or picking a site from their portfolio and asking them about why they did the design for the site that way.
10. Look for information about their working methods. Do they do valid xhtml/css code and design up to standards? Are their designs accessible? Do they do cross-browser testing?
11. Do they focus on marketing and sales and know how to focus a web site towards your goals?
12. How do you feel about them in general? Does they give you warm fuzzies? Do you feel like you’d be a good fit for each other?

These seem like a lot of questions to ask, but it’s important to remember that you will potentially have consitent contact with your designer for a decent period of time and may work together for a long time even after that. So, the same types of things you might ask when you are looking for a partner would also apply here.

As always, be careful who you work with, especially over the internet. A quick Google search on whoever you work with is usually advised.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Part 1 – Before You Contact a Web Designer
Part 2 – Preparing Your RFP Document
Part 3 – Finding Potential Web Designers
Part 4 – What to look for in a Web Designer
Part 5 – Questions to ask your potential web designer (coming soon!)

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer

Finding a suitable designer for your business is important. Part of your business’s reputation depends on putting your business’s best face forward online. This includes having a good website.

The best place to find a good and reliable web designer is through referrals. Ask other professionals in your industry or other people you trust who their web designers are. Or, contact businesses who have web sites that you admire and ask them who their designers are.

Another great way to find a designer is look through your network of people and see if there is anyone there you’ve had contact with in the past that you connected with well.

If you don’t have a way to get referrals for a web designer or have someone in your network, you may think about posting your job to an online job site. If you do this, be prepared to be very specific about what you need done and the information you are expecting in return from potential designers. Tip! A good way to narrow down potential candidates is to reject the responses that didn’t follow your instructions.

Some decent job sites are the following:
http://www.authenticjobs.com
http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com
http://jobs.webdesignerwall.com

In this day and age, it’s usually not necessary to work with a local designer, but if you prefer face to face contact every once in awhile, posting an ad in your local Craigslist might be another option for you.

Always be careful when you hire someone online. Check references and do a Google search on them to make sure they look reputable. After you have done that, if you’re still not sure, set up a time to talk to them on the phone a little bit and see how you feel about them.

In the next part of the series, I’ll talk about more things to look for in a web designer.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Part 1 – Before You Contact a Web Designer
Part 2 – Preparing Your RFP Document
Part 3 – Finding Potential Web Designers
Part 4 – What to look for in a Web Designer
Part 5 – Questions to ask your potential web designer (coming soon!)

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer

In part one of this series, I outlined the information you need to gather before you contact a web designer. In this article, I will show you how to place that information you gathered into a RFP document.

Many agencies and designers provide RFP worksheets for you to fill out that will later serve as your project RFP (Request for Proposal) document. This document will hopefully give enough information for the web designer to give you a proposal and serve as a base point for discussing your web site. If you don’t have one, you may use our example RFP worksheet (doc format) as your starting point.

Some of the things your RFP document should include are the following:

1. Basic Information:
   1. Your project deadline.
   2. Your budget.
2. Your Business Information:
   1. Your organization’s name.
   2. Your mission statement.
   3. Who your target audience is.
   4. Who your competitors are.
   5. Other applicable information about your company & industry.
3. Goals of the Project:
   1. What do you expect your web site to do for your business?
   2. What will make the project a success?
4. Design:
   1. How you envision your site.
   2. Other sites you like.
5. Technical Information
   1. What features your site should have.
   2. What CMS (content management system) you are interesting in using (ExpressionEngine, Wordpress, Drupal, etc.).
6. Content Information:
   1. Whether you have the content ready or not for you site and if you need the services of a copywriter.
   2. Whether or not you need stock photographs.

Here is an example fictitious RFP document filled out for a website for an online marketing consultant.

In my next post I will be outlining possible places to look for a compatible web designer to work with.

Other articles in the planning your website series:

Part 1 – Before You Contact a Web Designer
Part 2 – Preparing Your RFP Document
Part 3 – Finding Potential Web Designers
Part 4 – What to look for in a Web Designer
Part 5 – Questions to ask your potential web designer (coming soon!)

Some related resources you may also find helpful:

Example RFP
The Web Design Process
What to Expect
How to get the best out of your web designer