Finding A Good Web Designer
Keywords: web design, hire a web designer
If you just started an online business, you probably have no idea how to go about hiring a web designer. Who should you call? Should you look someone up in the yellow pages? Should you hire someone who works for a company that employs many different web designers, or should you hire a sole proprietor? Or, should you hire a freelancer who does web design part time? How much does it cost?
If you need someone to develop a very simple, static website that is merely a personal homepage or just an informational site about your business, then you pretty much have carte blanche. The only issue in this case would be cost. A freelancer will charge a lot less than a professional, but a freelancer might not do a thoroughly competent job. There are numerous website directories that contain a database of freelance web designers who are seeking work.
If you hire one of these individuals, make sure you request to see samples of web designs they have already done, just to make sure they have not done shoddy work in the past. I find it best to hire a professional in this instance, because even though a professional will charge more per hour, they can usually do much better work and get it done faster. So, in the end, a freelancer could actually charge more and you might end up getting a design of inferior quality.
Let us take a moment to delineate what the differences are between a freelancer, a sole proprietor, someone who owns a small, reputable web design business with a few employees, and a designer who is part of a huge company that employs up to one hundred web designers (there are quite a few companies out there that employ hundreds of web designers under a single company umbrella and also provide domain name registration and web hosting services all in one package).
First of all, a freelancer is usually someone for who web design is merely a hobby. This sort of a person has probably taken a few courses in simple web design at a local institute or college, or might be self-taught, and dabbles in web design as a part-time job or a way to earn extra cash. Some of these freelancers might be quite talented, but their designs are ordinarily not as crisp as what a professional can produce.
To reiterate, a freelancer is someone who only moonlights as a web designer. So, they are typically busy with their other career, and will take a longer time with your project because of time constraints. In the end, the freelancer probably will not give you the design you really want, and will refuse to refund your money.
A web designer who is part of a larger company that employs one hundred or more designers is just as bad as a freelancer. These sorts of web designers do not have much design skill, and are often given many different jobs to do at once. As a result, they will throw your design together haphazardly. You will be very disappointed with the work they produce.
The best web designers to hire are professionals who do web design as a career, and do focused projects. You should hire either a sole proprietor who has a large portfolio of work to show you, or a small firm of web designers who work together and have extensive web design experience. Professionals charge more than anyone else, but because they have so much experience and such a wide variety of designs for you to choose from, they will do a fantastic job in only a fraction of the time.
The only time you should use a freelancer or other inexperienced designer is if you can meet with that individual in person, explain exactly what you want, and if the project itself is very simple and the design work necessary for the job is not too extravagant. Do not make the mistake of hiring a freelancer over the internet that lives in a different state and only accepts payments via PayPal or some other sort of electronic payment processing service. Make sure your freelancer is someone who resides close by so that you can monitor their progress and visit them if you do not like the initial design they produce.
For almost all web design projects, it is best to hire a professional. Even though it costs more, it is generally only a one-time cost. A website is typically only designed once with major revisions only done once every few years; you may make changes here or there in the short run, but a web site usually stays the same for up to a few years or more. So, you might as well go with the most talented yet reasonably priced designer you can find.
Also, it is very important to hire a designer who has a contract that you can sign that stipulates certain terms and conditions. You should be able to pay the designer a down payment of 25% - 50% of the total quoted price for the job, with the balance due upon completion. This is critically important, because it can be very frustrating to flush money down the toilet on a design you hate without any way to recoup any of your funds afterwards.
Also, the designer should be able to quickly produce some sample layouts after they have been assigned the job so that you can at least pick a particular design that you like the most, and then the designer can begin working on that design rather than using their artistic license to create a design from scratch.
Follow all of these recommendations and be careful when hiring a web designer. Always work with a professional if your project requires a certain level of expertise and skill, and make sure you request a portfolio containing samples of their work so you can see what they have already done. Make sure their prior designs meet your standards.
Jim Pretin is the owner of www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make a free HTML form and download formmail.
Previous Articles Highlighter:
HTML Might Become Obsolete (1)
As almost every electronic device on the market is now equipped with internet access, it is important to use a versatile programming language like XHTML so that your web pages can be viewed and properly formatted across a wide variety of platforms.
Creating Your First HTML Form (2)
These third-party form creators usually do not provide you with the PHP code you need to process the form. Instead, they process it for you on their own servers.
Getting Ranked Higher On Search Engines (3)
The first thing you need to do is optimize your website for the keywords or phrases that people actually use when searching for products or services related to what you offer.
My Internet Marketing Secrets Revealed (4)
Link popularity is the number of web sites that currently link to your site. The more inbound links you acquire, the higher your search engine ranking will be. There are several ways you can garner links.
Improve Your Search Engine Ranking (5)
The first thing you need to do is optimize your website for the keywords or phrases that people actually use when searching for products or services related to what you offer.
Do You Need An HTML Form? (6)
If you want to learn to do it on your own, then try creating your form with the help of some online tutorials. Either way, it is important to have an online form so that people have a way to contact you directly through your website.
Introduction To Pay Per Click Marketing (7)
Keywords: pay per click, pay-per-click If you are starting an internet business, you probably know very little about internet marketing. There are several different ways that you can get traffic to your site, but for the purposes of this discussion, we are going to focus on pay per click marketing, which has become the most popular way to advertise an online business.
An Introduction To Internet Marketing (8)
The best way to find affiliates is by listing your program on forums or message boards visited by webmasters who are looking to generate additional revenue for their online business.
Website Marketing Made Simple (9)
Once you pay the initial deposit and the SEO company begins working on your website, they will often optimize your website in such a manner so that you will be able to quickly rise to the top of the rankings for a keyword that is either not significant or will not attract any real traffic to your website.
Internet Marketing Made Simple (10)
The more inbound links you acquire, the higher your search engine ranking will be. There are several ways you can increase your number of inbound links. You can submit your site to free directories, or join a link exchange and trade links with other sites, or, you can author articles and press releases and submit them to article directories.
A Guide To Internet Marketing (11)
You can submit your site to free directories, or join a link exchange and trade links with other sites, or, you can author articles and press releases and submit them to article directories, who will then distribute your articles to webmasters looking for free content, who must link back to your website when they publish your article on theirs.
Can Anyone Really Make Money Online? (12)
The only way to make money on the internet is by starting your own legitimate business. Jim Pretin is the owner of www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make email forms.
The Importance Of Link Popularity (13)
If your site provides a meaningful service or sells popular products, people will link to you after you start advertising and your site becomes more popular. You should also submit articles or press releases to article submission directories.
Issues With Formmail (14)
This is extremely difficult to do if you are not familiar with PHP. Again, you will need the help of a programmer if you can not do it. Also, you will need to make sure that included, somewhere in the code, is protection against spammers who will try to send spam through your form by altering the recipient field.
Choosing A Web Designer (15)
You should be able to pay the designer 25% - 50% of the total quoted price up front, with the balance due upon completion. Follow all of these recommendations and be careful when hiring a web designer or programmer.
What Is DHTML? (16)
To create a DHTML page, HTML 4.0 is used so that the structure of the page can be separated from the content through the use of the second component, style sheets.
A Brief Introduction To E4X (17)
XML data can be viewed on any platform or browser because it is a simple text file with no predefined tags, allowing the programmer to define data any number of ways.
What Is DTD? (18)
We will start with elements. Elements of XML are the tags. There are no predefined tags with XML; you can create your own tags. HTML does not work this way.
What Is RSS? (19)
This is a good way for webmasters to get sites to link to them, which is helpful because link popularity is perhaps the most important factor used to rank web sites on search engines.
How To Hire The Right Web Designer (20)
So, in the end, a freelancer could actually charge more and you might end up getting a design of inferior quality. Let us take a moment to delineate what the differences are between a freelancer, a sole proprietor, someone who owns a small, reputable web design business with a few employees, and a designer who is part of a huge company that employs up to one hundred web designers (there are quite a few companies out there that employ hundreds of web designers under a single company umbrella and also provide domain name registration and web hosting services all in one package).
Newer Articles Highlighter:
Your First Online Form (1)
Formmail has been used to process and email the results of web forms since 1997. When you download Formmail, make sure it has code that prevents spam from being sent through your online form.
Learn How To Use Formmail (2)
For example, if you have set up your form so that the results will be sent to your Yahoo email account, then you need to insert some code into the Formmail file that prevents the form from being submitted unless your Yahoo email account is the recipient.
How To Make Your Traffic Explode (3)
There are several ways you can garner links. You can submit your site to free directories, join a link exchange and trade links with other sites, and you can write articles and press releases and submit them to article directories and press release distribution services who will then distribute your articles and press releases to other websites who will publish them and in return link back to you.
Your First HTML Email Form (4)
If you are comfortable with programming, you might want to try to create your HTML email form yourself with the help of some online tutorials. If you do not have the patience to do the work, use an outside service that creates the form for you.
Learn To Create An Online Form (5)
Instead, they process it for you on their own servers. If you are comfortable with programming, you might want to try to create your online form yourself with the help of some online tutorials.
How Traffic To My Site Skyrocketed (6)
And finally, you should budget a small amount of money to spend each week on pay-per-click. If you are persistent and use all of these methods, you will continually increase your traffic over a period of time.
Your First Web Form (7)
If you do not have the patience to create your form yourself, there are more than a few form creation services on the internet that provide a simple way for you to create a form without doing any programming.
Internet Marketing For Beginners (8)
It is not uncommon for webmasters to blow thousands of dollars on PPC advertising and make only a few sales. The best way to promote your site, if you are actually selling something, is through an affiliate program.
How My Website Became Popular (9)
First of all, TV commercials, radio ads, and print advertising are very expensive. This is undoubtedly the best way to launch a business, but the costs are prohibitive. A full page ad in a prominent magazine or other publication can run as high as $50,000 per ad.
How To Make Your First Web Form (10)
There are many different versions of Formmail floating around the internet, and some have built-in spam protection while others do not. Many times, inexperienced programmers will put a form on their website that does not include code to at least try to prevent spammers from utilizing the form to send spam to hundreds or even thousands of people.
How To Start A Digital Information Business On The Internet (11)
Many people create a digital product and sell it in an internet book form. This is called an ebook and it is not hard to create. You can Google search the keyword phrase and search how to create and ebook and come up this all kinds of information to teach you how to do it.
How To Create A Content Rich Website (12)
This is an excellent and cost effective way of helping to drive website traffic to your site, because most article directories are free and if you have time, there are tons and tons of directories that you can submit articles to.
7 Internet Marketing Secrets That Will Curl Your Toes (13)
After each purchase ask the buyer for a testimonial, keep the convincing ones to show your prospects. 5) Make your offer magnetic You want to draw your buyer in right away, so your offer should stand apart from those already on the market.
Google Page Rank Is It Relevant To Your Websites Placement? (14)
You can compare all the sites for yourself and can make a partial determination that the Google Page Rank is still a large factor is determining your placement for targeted keywords in the free listings.
How To Beat Marketing Competitors (15)
Don't get discouraged. Many of today's top Internet marketers started exactly where you are right now. It may take you trying a few products before finding the one that fits.
Successful Strategies For Marketing (16)
Another strategy in marketing you can use to your advantage is learning how to use email marketing effectively. It takes more than just a few minutes to write a professional email, one that won't immediately get deleted or end up in the trash bin.
Writing Article Reviews (17)
Although it can be an expensive way to get information, you will be able to provide solid information. You will have a real review. Another option to consider is to ask the owner for a trial, and tell them you own a popular review site that you plan reviewing their product on.
Keywords Are The Key To Success (18)
Sometimes, you may even feel that your customers speak a completely different language from yours! However, once you have a list of potential keyword phrases for your website, you could try adding some variations, plurals, and derivatives to the existing keyword phrases.
Magnetize Your Affiliate Marketing Site (19)
No matter how well designed your site, if your customers are not convinced, it won't sell. One way is by having an upfront privacy policy statement. Also, provide authentic contact information online so your customers can ask you valuable questions concerning their business.
3 Quick And Easy Ways To Building A Profitable Opt-in List (20)
Keep it organized and manageable. Get or hire help if need be, just make sure that your subscribers are happy and satisfied and they will be willing to buy from you.