Planning Your Website - Finding a Potential 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
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
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