Website Designers
   
 







The Pitfalls of Choosing Website Desigers
There are thousands of website designers in the UK alone.  If you want a website designed it is really hard to choose a designer to meet your needs.  This guide will help you to save time, money and heartache by avoiding some of the most common pitfalls.
 
 

Best Business Opportunities - Web Designer
Pitfall One
Nobody Sees Your Site
 
The internet is full of beautiful websites which are seen by virtually no-one except the designer, his or her proud Mum and the person who paid the designer for the site.
 
So how will people find your site?  If the answer is that you would like people to find your site when they use a search engine such as Google or Yahoo then you need either to think about paying the search engine to list your site (usually down the right hand side of the page) or you need to make sure that your web designer understands search engine optimisation.  
 
Search engine optimisation is the art and science of helping to ensure that your website is displayed for free as a result when someone searches for something about which there is information on your site.  As an example, if you are a plumber in Basingstoke, you would want people to see a link to your website if they search for “plumbers in Basingstoke”.
 
Sounds straightforward?  Well it is not.  You need a website designer who understands search engine optimisation (SEO) to design your site.  You will also need to carry out some work yourself once the site is finished.
 
Well, I hear you asking, surely if, to use the jargon, SEO is so important, all website designers will be experts?  Sadly no, a substantial number of designers seem to have completely overlooked the importance of SEO and will design beautiful sites that are pretty useless. 
 
So, to avoid the first and probably the largest pit, make sure that your website designer really understands search engine optimisation before you start.  The tests which you can do for this are:
 
  • Ask the designer to demonstrate that his or her site comes high up for some search terms on major search engines.  If they cannot successfully optimise their own site, how much chance is there of them optimising yours well.
  • Read what the designer says about him or herself.  If they say little or nothing on their website or in their brochures about SEO then they may not understand its importance.
  • Get references from other people who have had websites designed by them.  How well has the optimisation worked on their site.
  • Does what the designers says about SEO seem to make sense.  SEO does seem to be a rather foggy subject (there is a huge amount of speculation about the details of how the search engines rank sites) but if the designer cannot explain the basics clearly then he or she may not really understand them.
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If you love the look of a site designed by someone who does not seem to understand SEO then there is the possibility of getting the designer to work closely with an independent SEO consultant.  Getting the responsibilities of both parties clearly set out could be an issue.

Pitfall Two 
Not Getting What You Want
 
The worst case scenario is that you have a vision for a website.  You relay this vision to a designer who says “Yes I can do that in return for a sackload of money”.  You hand over the money and you receive a website which does not do what you want and does not look like you expected.
 
This type of problem is not restricted to websites.  It can apply to interior designers, hairdressers and even dating agencies!  It seems, however, to be a particularly common problem with websites.  The best design companies will spend considerable time working on a specification with a client.  This can be an extraordinarily time-consuming and often tedious activity but it does reduce the risk of a major misunderstanding.
 
Points to look for when choosing a designer are:
 
  • Is the designer proposing to use an off-the-shelf website which is tailored to your needs or will the site be custom built?  Off-the-shelf packages can be a cost effective way of getting great websites but there will be some things which you cannot change.  Do you know what the restrictions are?
  • At an early stage talk to your designer about one of the more complex aspects of your proposed site.  Does he or she really take on board what you are saying?  Can you understand what they are saying to you or do they resort to jargon or vague generalisations every time the going gets tough.
  • Have previous clients got what they wanted?
  • What is their design process?  Do you get enough opportunities to have an input?

Choosing A Web Designer
Pitfall Three
The Bill Keeps Going Up and Up!
 
“It’ll cost you!” was the mantra of one website designer I encountered.  If you wanted to change the colour of something or add an extra link, there would suddenly be a cost.
 
It felt a bit like talking to a builder who sucks the air in between his teeth as soon as you mention that perhaps one electrical socket for the whole lounge is not quite enough and that 4 or 5 would seem to be more normal nowadays.
 
There is no absolute remedy for this.  It is not unreasonable for a designer to charge for additional work but you need to be as sure as you can that the designer’s idea of “additional” is the same as yours.  The best protection you can give yourself is:
 
• make sure that the specification is as detailed as possible before you sign
• ask yourself if you trust your potential designer – if not, choose someone else
• chase up on references
• accept the extra charges where they are reasonable and fight those that are not
• make sure that you pay in stages to ensure that you have some leverage
 
Pitfall Four
So Whose Website Is It?
 
And a final thought – make absolutely and 100% sure that when you have paid out your thousands of pounds that the website is really yours.  Make sure that you can:
 
move your website to another hosting service
sell your website
replicate your website (i.e. use the same shell of a site to sell cameras as to sell computer printers)
use your artwork and logos
 
without any restrictions or charges imposed by the designer.
 
Read your contract with real care or even better ask your lawyer to have a look at it before you sign.
 
Good luck!