How to hire a GREAT Website Designer or Developer. Don’t make a mistake
How to hire a GREAT Website Designer or Developer. Don’t make a mistake
http://OmniDigitalAdvice.com
Choosing a website developer and/or designer is an important and difficult decision. So much rides on your website namely your sales and your brand. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and looking for advice to make an informed decision then don’t worry. We are going to explain what to look for and what to avoid when it comes to hiring a web developer/designer.
Hiring a great designer and developer is about finding the right fit for your business. We can help you find the right people for the job using our experience and our network of tried, tested and recommended developers/designers. Just contact us on http://contact@omniappstudios.com
The main things to look for include:
A strong portfolio
Someone that understands what you need
Someone that understands your business or industry
Good communication
Enough capacity to commit to your project
A strategy to measure effectiveness
The knowledge and use of best practices
A development plan with deadlines and reporting periods
A good warranty and support offer
Make sure you shop around and get different opinions from different website designers. By exploring the market you can make a better informed decision when hiring.
Clearly define the purpose of the website so you are clear on the strategy. Your website is a form of marketing so it’s an investment not an expense. Check their understanding of your business, do they understand the problems you are trying to solve?
If you want to find great designers and developers you need to realise that they will be in high demand. They often aren’t looking for jobs because so many people are offering them work. To find these types of people a good place to go is to technical meetups. Check Facebook and Meetup.com for meetups like these in your area. Remember to clearly define what you need from your site and be enthusiastic about it. You want to capture a good designer’s attention with a promising project.
You should develop a plan to measure effectiveness of the website. You will need to know if it’s working and what elements work best. With this knowledge you can tweak and refine your site. Make sure you install tracking codes for analytical software like Google Analytic, Google Webmaster Tools and Inspeclet. Monitor the work you are getting and how you got it. Ask your customers how they found you and track the conversions you get from visitors to your site. For more information about this please ask me.
Set expectations with your website designer so there are minimal mismatched of expectations and misunderstandings. Good communication will help this. Have regular reporting meeting and updates. Be open to advice from your website developer and give constructive feedback. You don’t want to cause resentment by being too brutal in your criticism of their work. Give them one or two chances to get things right until you decide they are doing a terrible job. Many times what you perceive as wrong might be because you communicated what you wanted poorly.
Find out how busy your website designer/developer is and find out upfront what level of service will you get. Are they spreading themselves too thin on other projects? Will they offer a good warranty period and support rate? How often can you contact them? Bare in mind how many people in the web team. If someone is sick or on leave do they have backup?
Make sure you document your requirements adequately so that website developers and designers can estimating costs effectively. See this video for information on requirement gathering. Getting the requirements right will prevent scope creep. If there are features you need that weren’t originally agreed upon you can mark them down for phase 2 of your site. Do the minimum needed to make the site perform its purpose and if it shows promise invest in upgrades. http://www.omnidigitaladvice.com/video/how-to-gather-requirements-correctly_41
Remember to think about the content management system (CMS). Make sure it’s designed to allow you to make predictable refinement tweaks. You don’t want to be asking your website developer to make changes all the time. The more you can do in a CMS the cheaper it will be although it will cost you some time to make the updates yourself.
Questions to ask…
What version control system do you use, why and what did you compare it to? Using best practice, know there are multiple choices and in comparing they looked at strengths and weaknesses and chose one showing logical reasoning. If they can explain by explaining complex technical stuff to you so you can understand then you can communicate effectively.
Ask what blogs they follow and what groups they are members of. If they care about their craft they will be reading and discussing it with other designers/developers. They should also be using best practices like peer review, version control and acceptance tests.…