Hiring a web designer? What you need to know

Advice  •  Thu 9 Mar 2017

When it comes to your website, what's obvious to me is rarely obvious to my clients. Who provides what, when, how? In this article I'll explain.

Would you believe it, but clients come in all shapes and sizes?!

Some have large budgets, other's small. Typically those with larger budgets want a more hands off approach. Which is what we professional web designers prefer. Clients with smaller budgets however, can neither afford a hands off approach and actually prefer to be doing most of the driving anyway.

Either way, let's discuss who does what, when, and how.

Content

Content is a tricky one. Most of my clients know, that at some point, they will have to provide the content.

Ideally (most of your) content should be ready before your website is developed. But, often this is not the case, especially if writing is not your thing. It's not uncommon for a website to sit in my staging area for weeks, fully paid for, but still awaiting content.

Which leads to, who uploads it?

If there's room in your budget, I will upload some of your content, but not all of it. Whilst a relatively straightforward task, uploading content can take a lot of time to get right and someone has to pay for that time.

Usually, it's the fear of the unknown - not knowing how to use the software - which holds clients back and keeps them in my staging area for much longer than they need to be. A good copywriter can not only write your content, but, for a little extra, upload it too.

Photos

There are good stock photos and there are bad ones. 

I generally use Shutterstock.

The general rule of thumb is to go for photos that look authentic, not cheesy. 

Photos cost money. Sometimes, I may, when quoting your project, add a little extra for photos. But for the most part, I'll either recommend Shutterstock or quote you separately for photos. Whether you select them or I do is entirely your choice.

Alternatively, hire a professional photographer. But make sure that they have experience taking photos for online purposes. Not every photographer knows how to shoot, crop, and edit photos for web banners or slideshows. But, those are the kind you want.

Pages

Clients still ask me, how many pages can I have? And I reply, you can have as many as you want!

Which usually comes as a great joy!

I'm not sure why, as more pages means more content and photos!

Regardless, a general list of pages is always welcome at the start of the project. You can always add pages later and you can also remove them too. Instead of thinking pages, think Page Templates. How many unique page templates will you need? How about:

• Your home page template
• An about us page
• Maybe a page which has sub pages (e.g. Services page)
• A contact page
• And perhaps even a gallery?

Each of these templates has to be created by your web designer and the more templates, the more expensive your website.

Summing up

Hopefully, this article has shed a little light on what to expect from your web designer or me. And what is required from you, when, and how, so that I can build for your business the website it deserves.

Feel free to contact me with your questions regarding this or any of my articles.