Part of the series Choosing the Web Designer of Your Dreams
Understand that not everyone who bills himself as a professional web designer necessarily knows what he’s doing. Folks often create a personal site or two as a hobby, have fun doing it, and think they’re ready to quit the day job and do this for a living! Enchanted with the perceived glamour of working from home and the idea of getting paid to do something fun, the wannabe designer slaps up a shingle and opens for business.Not that I’m criticizing. I understand the feelings, because after doing my first couple of personal sites, I felt more or less the same way. The difference is that I went on to learn my trade before inflicting my work upon paying innocents. But you can’t count on everyone possessing the same extraordinary insight that I do.
So it’s your job to learn to differentiate between the clueless and the clued. I’m here to help you do that. While you may not agree with all my conclusions, they will provide you a starting point in evaluating a potential web design partner.
The Domain
Look at the web address. Does the designer have a domain? This is basic. Professionals won’t have a web address like “http://www.aol.com/~JCat159/” or worse, a free hosting account laden with popups and other annoyances. Eeek! Domain names are inexpensive, and there isn’t an excuse for a professional web designer not to have one. Period.
Email Considerations
Is the email address from the designer’s own domain? This is an admittedly small issue, but potentially telling. Even if someone prefers prefer to use an internet service provider’s (ISP) email address for everyday use, it’s a simple issue to forward the email from your domain to your ISP email address, or any other email address. Your web designer needs basic technical skills, after all, as well as the business savvy to realize that an email address from a professional domain leaves a better impression than a non-related email address.
And if the email address is from a free service like Hotmail or Yahoo, that’s even worse. While it probably means absolutely nothing in reality, it leaves the impression of instability, as if the designer is preparing for a quick getaway. Since your website is your face to the world, you need a web designer to be aware of the impressions these small issues may generate.
And while we’re talking email, are email addresses and other contact info easy to find? This needs to be readily available. Are there phone numbers and postal addresses listed as well as email contact info? You don’t want a designer you can’t reach, after all.
Advertising
Is the site cluttered with ads? While some folks may choose to include advertisements (like googleAds) on their sites, for a professional web design site, the work and services should be the focus. Unlike content-based or niche sites which often support themselves with ads, a designer’s site that is loaded with ads always makes me suspicious. After all, if the designer is not good enough to support their own web design site without the extensive use of ads, then is this really someone you want designing your site?
Portfolio
Spend some serious time looking through the portfolio. (There is a portfolio, right?) Do all the sites in the portfolio look the same? Do you like what you see?
Visit some of the sites. Can you find your way around? Do you find lots of errors? Do the sites work as you expect them to? Do you doze off waiting for the pages to load? Finally, are these examples of sites you would be comfortable calling your own?
Surfing Experience
What about page-loading time? Do the designer’s sites look great but take years to display? Check out the files size on a few images. PC users can right click on the image and select “Properties.” Every image is best sized under 50K: the more under the better! For a fast-loading site, individual images should probably be under 25K. For example, the eye image above comes in at a slim 3K! Images need to be appropriately compressed for web use.
Overall Gut Reaction
Does anything just look a little “off” to you? If it feels weird to you, there’s probably something amiss in the layout. Page elements that aren’t aligned properly, awkward positioning, or too many fonts will make a site look slightly odd to us, even though we may not be able to articulate the reasons why.
Also, be on the lookout for overly long pages with everything centered, busy background images, conspicuous animations, graphical visitor counters, lack of consistency in the layout and graphical elements between pages, lack of coordinated color schemes throughout the site, or lots of oversized, multi-colored text. Any of these issues can all indicate a lack of professional design knowledge and experience.
If we’re looking at a personal or hobby site and you like the designer’s work (or prices) anyway, okay. But for a professional site, you are best off with someone with the proper knowledge and experience to create a professional image.
Part of the series Choosing the Web Designer of Your Dreams
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Posted on January 27, 2009 at 12:40 pm in: Web Advice
