A quality website is the bedrock of your online business. After all, research shows that it takes only about 0.05 seconds for users to form a sentiment about a website and that 8 out of 10 online shoppers wouldn’t return to a website after having a bad UX.
Whether you’re planning to redesign your existing site or create a web presence for your brand new business, you’re probably googling or asking about freelancers or agencies providing web design services.
However, the web world has grown so intricate, complex, and multifaceted that the concept of web design has become somewhat vague and inexact.
Designing a website nowadays comprises many factors, from ensuring users can easily understand and use the site to meeting search engines’ technical and quality guidelines.
This article will be helpful to anyone unsure of what skills and experience to seek in their future web design team. Therefore, we discuss the steps to help you partner with the perfect web designer who’ll help your business website thrive.
Table of Contents
Steps to Find a Perfect Web Designer
1. Identify Your Needs
Knowing what outcomes you wish your website to yield will be the starting point for your decision. So, first, determine the kind of website you need.
A business one-pager and an eCommerce website require entirely different designs, features, and functionalities; and, as such, two distinct web design skill sets.
2. Set Your Design Budget
While searching for your perfect web designer, stay aware of your budget limitations. During initial meetings, you’ll realize that a quality web design is an investment.
Nevertheless, you shouldn’t refrain from discussing your needs with reputable design agencies or individuals and simply go for a company that offers outdated designs for a lower price.
Strive for balance in the sense of choosing a financially reasonable yet good quality web solution.
3. State Your Needs & Expectations
When meeting with potential web design providers, leverage the best of worlds – present your online business meticulously and transparently, and ask the designer to share their opinions, experiences, and arguments.
You may not know the specific terminology, but you can provide the designer with your experience or users’ accounts of potential website problems.
For example, you’ve noticed that users frequently abandon the cart before finalizing their purchase, or you’ve had customers complaining they cannot find specific products on the website. Presenting these situations to a good designer will help them identify that your site has a problem with UX and will know how to solve it.
Once you’ve identified your current site’s problem, you can reach out to the best UX design company to partner with.
Of course, the same goes for any other issue your website may have, such as slow loading time, lack of responsive design, inconsistent branding, etc.
4. Review the Designer’s Portfolio
Besides discussing your ideas, deadlines, and price, another important factor when choosing a web designer is their portfolio.
A portfolio portrays the designer’s or a design agency’s previous web works. But, more importantly, it allows you a peek into their design style, quality, and focus.
Even though you might not deem yourself relevant to assess a professional web designer’s work, you are fit to say whether you like their previous designs or not.
Make sure to hire a designer with a solid portfolio, renowned clients, and whose earlier work aligns with your expectations.
While you’re at it, read through client testimonials to gain insight into their work for others like you. If your potential designer has dozens of positive reviews, it’s a good sign that you’re heading toward a good partnership.
5. Inquire About the Design Process
As you’re outside the world of web design, your perfect web designer must understand that you’re not familiar with all the concepts and processes. Thus, they should do their best to genuinely and in detail present to you their website design methodology.
If the design (team) is reluctant to sit down with you and explain to you precisely what they do, how, and why, this option may not be the best for you.
Ambiguous answers and a lack of transparent communication between you and the designer can indicate hurried work, “one size fits all” types of solutions and deceitful practices.
6. Create the Winning Team
Website design is essential to your business’s online success; however, it is only a piece of the puzzle that is your entire digital strategy.
Thus, to reap maximum benefits from your new website design, review all the ideas and plans with the rest of your team – namely developers, SEO strategists, and digital marketers.
Each member of your digital team will have suggestions and arguments to complement the designers’ ideas. The point here is to communicate openly about the pros and cons of particular solutions and thus reach the most favorable outcome.
Ensure everyone’s put their egos aside and remind everyone that they should work together towards a common goal.
Conclusion
The process of finding a good web designer is not an easy one. It takes time, patience, and effort. However, once you get there, the results will be worth all the hard work you invested in.
We’ve compiled a list of some of the most important things to look for when hiring a professional web designer. This includes everything from web designers’ portfolios to their experience and the following:
- Portfolio
- Experience
- Communication skills
- Pricing
- Design Process
- References
- Reviews
In short, if you follow these steps, you’ll find a great web designer who will help you create a beautiful website that will bring your business to the next level.
Good luck!
