Hiring the right web designer is critical to the success of your business, and a designer is a fundamental part of your team’s strategy for meeting its objectives.
As a result, there are a few things you need to know before hiring your next designer.
Just as your designer must meet certain responsibilities, your business must also take the steps to develop an effective collaboration for long-term growth.
Mistake #1: Failing to Plan
You need to gather all of the materials and specifications needed to design a fully functioning site that converts your audience into paying customers.
Your first meeting with a web designer is an opportunity for the designer to learn about your business in order to meet the demands required of your web design project.
Having web copy ready is essential to saving time and cost when designing your site. Provide a company bio that speaks to your ideal customer profile along with testimonials from existing customers.
Prepare samples of other sites that are related to your industry to highlight any design preferences and the elements that you’d like to avoid.
Determine what colors and keywords you’d like to use as part of your site’s design. These work together to reach your ideal customer and increase the likelihood that they’ll make a purchase.
Mistake #2: Not Establishing Ownership
Websites must be updated and maintained over time to grow search engine rankings and meet the changing needs of an evolving market.
Using a content management system (CMS) makes it easy to make changes to your site without having to understand complex code.
But not all businesses establish this when hiring a web designer. Some designers may keep full control of a given website due to a payment dispute or a failure to establish terms within a contract.
Be sure to define the terms related to ownership and access and include them in your contract, or review your existing one so that you’re clear on the agreement that’s already in place.
Mistake #3: Putting Too Much Focus on Skill Sets
When hiring a web designer, some businesses make the mistake of focusing too narrowly on skill sets. The right skills are important when hiring a designer, but they shouldn’t overshadow an individual’s ability to acquire new skills over time.
Technology evolves at a rapid pace. So new skills are required every few years in order for your designer (and your business) to remain on the cutting edge. A candidate’s ability to adapt to new tools and languages outweighs their level of competence in a particular skill.
Inquire about any new courses or languages your candidates have recently taken on. The resources they use give you insight into their learning abilities and motivation.
Attending industry conferences is another indication of a web designer’s abilities. Find out which annual events they participate in and what they have taken away from their most recent conference.
Mistake #4: Not Having an SEO Strategy in Place
Failing to have an SEO plan is a plan to fail when it comes to web design. But you can also make this mistake by having a plan that isn’t implemented in the design process.
New businesses often hire web designers that don’t have a full understanding of SEO. Experienced businesses often fail to provide their SEO campaign information to their new web designers.
Either way, you reduce the likelihood of designing a website that actually works for your business.
An understanding of the SEO and the ways it influences site design determines the results you get from your web designer.
These are fundamental principles you need to implement in order to avoid the most common (and costly) mistakes when hiring a web designer. But they’re not the only ones.
If you’re struggling to find the right web designer, let us know in the comments below so that we can help you determine what to look for in order to save time and money while taking your website design to the next level.
