How to judge a good website designer?

[CapitolShine]

I am looking into hiring a company to redesign my website. What tips can someone give me about how to judge whether a company is good or not? I am most interested in the website being designed to work well with SEO and crawls. Do I compare the rankings of the websites they have in their portfolio? I'm so petrified that I'm going to make the wrong choice.

[EGOL]

There are so many things that you want... will be hard to find all of this in a single designer.

I would look for a designer who.......

-- is competent at the technical aspects of SEO (Could save you tons of work and money down the road.  A clueless designer can change all of your URLs for fun, give you a framed site, deoptimize everything, give you the same title tag on all 10,000 pages.  My competitor had a redesign done and they noindexed it.  Man, did we make a lot of money for a few weeks. 

-- can make your site look nice (look at lots of their portfolio sites.  If you don't see things that you like then go to another designer's site)

-- understands the importance of conversion rate / user engagement (You don't want a redesign that will kill your sales on a retail site or kill your pageviews on an info site.  One of my sites was redesigned and it looked great but income fell through the floor.  When you have your site redesigned you want these metrics to go UP.  So, I would try to determine if I am talking with someone who knows about conversion rate and usability.  Some designers can brag that they increase these metrics for site owners.   I would ask what is the plan if the design tanks. If this offends them or if they get defensive then I would get someone else.  You can lose a million dollars in sales this way.)

-- knows who owns the website!  This is your website and you should have every say over the look and the features.   It's not their "work of art".  Instead, it is the "face of your business and brand".   They should make an effort to learn a little about you, your business and your style, then produce a design that matches that.  If they are not looking for input from you then you will get pot luck.  Part of this is your duty but at the same time you should not have to pull their teeth or use a hammer to reshape the design if it is not working for you.

-- works in stages and looks for your feedback.  Before they start coding you should see a graphic of the design and talk about the look and all of the features.  If you can't get to agreement here then you should be able to terminate the job.  Some designers ask for multiple payments... one that takes you through the "look"... and one or two more as the work progresses.

These are just my opinions.  Lots of people do things differently and some designers might not like my attitude but that is something that they should find out up front and is part of my duty to communicate.

[RobertFisher]

Capitol Shine,

Great question and you are asking it at the right time...before you build the site. I like your question about comparing the ranking of websites in their portfolio but would suggest you not use that as an end all. Here is why. I am working on my wife's real estate site. She has about 15 communities in Houston that are important on her site, but we put our content efforts into five. She kills for those, but the others are all over the place depending on the term used. That is the other issue - do you know what their client wanted to rank for? So, look at their on page if they tout SEO. Do they have duplicate meta descriptions or no meta descriptions at all? Do they have a bunch of 404's? Have they taken care of the www.mysite.com vs. mysite.com with the canonical and domain preference in GWMT?

Now, I prefer web developers vs. web designers (Please no one take offense). By this I mean someone who can design from the stand point of understanding architecture, some SEO, coding, and can find ways to stretch themselves and not do what everyone else does. If the sites are all template looking, well, they are template looking. I like to give a client something more. You want someone who is proficient in Adobe beyond photoshop. You want someone who understands how to use code to make things happen that the rest of the world has not caught up with yet. You can also ask them  how they are using Schema today to improve the outcomes of their clients. (That will suggest how well they are at keeping up.)

Lastly, and most important of all. PLEASE Read and Re-read: Find out how they approach the building of the website. (But don't ask that question.) Are they telling you a lot about what you will need to do? Are they telling you that if you do not have the content they will not start building? Are they telling you that they will not work with another developer? Do they have a website with a questionnaire on it or a way of gathering data about what you might like? These are things they should be doing and things they should have. Here is why:

Most people start building the website while they are designing it. When you do this, things will change at the design and development level and inevitably stall the project. The way to approach a website build is to know what you want to accomplish first. Be clear on what features are important to you. Be clear on what look your potential clients will want and that the dev/design team can do that.

If you put the design phase with the build phase you will not get the kind of site that it appears you want. Find someone that will tell you, "This is how we do it; we will work with you in our framework."

Lastly, ask if you can speak with their last three customers... You will learn a lot.

Good question, looking forward to the site,

Robert

[CapitolShine]

What's the least I can I expect to pay for someone who can build a website that works well with SEo and is crawled well too? I don't have a large budget but the information the website has to relay to viewers is fairly simple..it's for an auto detailing company so it's not a complex subject. I have about 6 different pages.

[Marcus_Miller]

You know, it really does not have to be complicated, but if SEO is your primary objective then you really want an SEO friendly web site designer rather than just going to any graphic design shop that has bolted on websites yet probably does not really understand the nuances of search.

Price? Again, it does not have to be expensive and if you were happy with a WordPress site with a simple design applied to a premium theme and the site set up and configured with some SEO tools then we do that kind of thing for around £1500 (we are in the UK).

It all just depends so much - do you have a logo & brand? Do you need lots of design? Do you have  specific look you are going after? Do you need training after the site is built or can you pick this up? Do you want content optimised? Do you want content written?

It's really is a how long is a piece of string question that without really getting a handle on what your requirements are then to give a price is just going to wildly speculative. That said, the basics, a site, based on WordPress, your brand and optimised with the Yoast SEO plugin could be made pretty quickly, easily and without breaking the bank.

[RobertFisher]

Looking at 6 to 8 pages, you providing the content (images, video, text) somewhere between $1,500 to $3,000. The reasons for the range are myriad, but typically if you have content, a site like that should run toward the $1,500 more than the $3K.