Web Designer Needed

[jesse-landry]

So I feel like I've almost convinced my boss to hire out a re-design for our website (which is SORELY needed.)

I'm at the step where I need to start finding quotes and site builders.

I want a responsive design site built modern and professional... Love the moz site but not responsive enough. My current favorite example is at www.hasoffers.com

Does anybody have any suggestions of where to go?

And as a bonus, if anybody is brave enough to ballpark what a site like this would cost that would be awesome. Doesn't have to be exact or even that close...

Thanks for any advice given.

[jesse-landry]

Or maybe it's time for me to learn Wordpress, eh....?

[Kara.Wallace]

Hi Jesse,

It all depends

Depending on the number of pages, the number of layouts, whether they need to write copy, perform usability testing, etc. And depends on the type of platform they are developing on OR if you are going to get a new platform.

The price changes with the number of iterations needed to layouts/design and the time frame you are looking at.

It also depends on whether you have a freelancer or agency do it. Without knowing the complete scope, I would guess somewhere between $50k-$250k if it is a pretty large site. If it is only like 50 pages and you only did a few templates, you could maybe get away with spending $10k-$30... depending on the people you work with.

First, I would look at design firms available in your area. Check out the websites they have developed and contact someone at the company they developed for and ask them about their experience. Do this for a handful of firms. Then contact each firm and ask them for a quote. After you have quotes from firms, go out and ask some freelancers... look at their work... ask for a quote. You will probably have to have some sit down, in person interviews with these people to make sure that they really get what you are asking for.

I know that doesn't completely answer your question, but hopefully it gives you a few things to think about.

Mike

[jesse-landry]

Mike,

That was very helpful, thank you. It is a small site. Currently sitting at 72 pages but that includes a ton of blogs and support articles which are all easily copied and can be done quickly by myself if I'm able to dump content into layouts. Without blogs and support pages it's more like 30 pages.

More I think about it the more I want to experiment with Wordpress. So I'm going to fool around with it this week if I could just figure out how to install it in a sub-directory... (so far I'm getting nothing but 403s just trying to install... not going well!)

In the meantime I'm going to take your advice and start contacting local firms and requesting quotes. I am in the Seattle area so it shouldn't be too hard to find.

[Kara.Wallace]

Go find a college kid who is good at webdesign. I bet you could hire him/her yet for the summer and you could get them wicked cheap. If you only have 30 pages, you'd probably only need a handful of templates/layouts. And since you are going to use a free CMS, you could probably get away with only paying a couple grand.

Good luck.

Mike

[EGOL]

I have used designcontest.com to get redesign images for a website.    That allows me to see design ideas from a lot of people and have the good ones tweaked before making a decision.  I have used it about four times so far. Each time I got a design better than what I could have made myself.

If you do this write a really detailed description of what you want and what you don't want.

I use this only for the "look" of the site.  We then write the code in-house because I don't want to trust that to anyone else.

[EarGear]

Feel free to check out some of my work, as well shoot me an email and i can give you some numbers!

www.objectifyme.ca

Chris Pafiolis
Designer (B.Des)
chris@objectifyme.ca

ps. this is a clients moz account thus the name mismatch

[jesse-landry]

Thanks Chris your site looks AWESOME and is damn near exactly the style I'm shooting for.

Convincing my CEO to fit it in the budget will be another story.. I may be contacting you shortly.

Thanks to all as well.

[Charlessipe]

You could go to a Wordpress Theme marketplace like Themeforest and contact the creators of themes you like to see if they will do a custom design or customize a template that you like.

I've heard good things about Dribbble.com as a design community to find top-notch designers.

[jesse-landry]

Good ideas Charles, thank you!

I've been playing with Twitter's Bootstrap for a few hours now and I almost feel like that's a viable solution. It's so clean... but it forces me to learn even more HTML/CSS than I planned to.

I'd much rather get a designer involved... my CEO is being a stickler on the finances of this for some reason. Our company is entirely web-based... it's our storefront. Why wouldn't you want to spend money on the face of your company, you know? Anyway... thanks