Your Next Website Design Project: How to Select the Right Person for the Job

The Challenge to Hiring the Right Person for a Great Website Design

Oh how things have changed! It used to be that when you wanted a website, you called the guy you knew with the most tech savvy. You might have called him a computer nerd, or a tech geek, or maybe just Bob. As it turns out, Bob knew how to put together websites and he was able to do it on the cheap. And that worked okay for a while, but then everyone started getting online. I mean everyone – even grandma was throwing her phone book away. Little did you know, people started expecting better experiences from the websites they visited.

Fast forward to 2015 and the list of professionals who offer website design seems to go on and on. Bob is still out there doing his thing, but he’s still building websites that look like they belong in the ’90s; freelance website designers are everywhere; web development firms are a plenty on Google; marketing agencies design websites now. So which is the best choice? You want a great website design, but you also don’t want to be paying for someone’s cruise around the world either. As it turns out, the lines are pretty blurry and from one “web designer” to the next you could be getting something remarkably different.

The Secret to Hiring the Right Professional for Your Next Website Design Project

So I’ll let you in on a little secret that a lot of those web designers don’t want you to know: building a great website is about so much more than pretty colors, perfectly aligned elements and carefully selected typography. What really matters is what people will do when they come to your website and how well your website does to attract visitors in the first place. The real answer to the question of who to hire is this: you need a graphic designer, a web developer, an SEO expert, a conversion optimizer, a copywriter, a social media guru… holy cow; does such a person really exist? As it turns out, he does and there is a title for this position: a digital strategist.

Marketing online has turned into a necessity for the largest of enterprises and the smallest of boutiques and, as such, there are a ton of different jobs in the Internet marketing world. There are people who perhaps focus only on SEO or graphic design, or some other specific area, and they work as part of a larger team or do work for hire for other industry pros, but a digital strategist is sort of like the conductor of the orchestra. He was trained and is proficient on many instruments, perfected a few, but his real expertise is in knowing how all of the instruments play together for a well-orchestrated piece. By hiring a digital strategist you can rest assured that the end product will do more than just look pretty and you’ll get advice about what else you should be doing beyond launching a great new website.

Interviewing Your Prospective Website Design Professional

With all of that understanding, you still won’t know if the person you are thinking about gifting your website design project to is going to do the best job until you ask her some questions. So what should you be asking? There are likely many that you personally want answered, but here are some key questions that you may not have thought about asking:

1. Do you offer SEO services? Will my new website be optimized for search engines?
2. Do you provide assistance with organizing and editing content so that my message compels visitors to become my customer?
3. What sort of ideas do you have to make my website not just an information tool, but more of a marketing tool?
4. What calls-to-action do you recommend I place on my website and where should they go?
5. What role does design play in retaining visitors and maximizing the time they spend on my website?
6. Can you help me grow the traffic to my website once the project is over?

While you may still be satisfied if some of these questions can’t be answered by your prospective web designer. Perhaps she knows a professional who can help you in the areas where she is lacking. No matter, these are the sort of questions you should be seeking answers to as you embark on this project as you’ll want your investment to begin to deliver a return.

Consider Hiring Xponent21 For Your Next Website Design Project

One of the things that makes us different is that we don’t accept every website design project that comes our way. If you just need a website slapped onto the web, there are plenty of people out there who can do that for a few hundred bucks.You could even do it yourself with inexpensive (and even free) website builders. But if you are looking to grow your business and you think the Internet might be a catalyst for your success, we’re more than happy to share with you what we know. With a wide range of expertise from strategy to design and SEO to online advertising, you can be confident that a website built by our team will serve as the foundation to your entire marketing plan. At Xponent21, we deliver Xponential growth through 21st Century marketing solutions; in other words, we build websites that kick ass and take names.

Take a look at some of our work or let’s chat about your project…