WEB DESIGNERS: HOW TO CHOOSE A GOOD ONE. 1. First things first - Mind Your Budget. ... And by all means, if you don't have one, make one. Decide how much you're willing to spend on web designers and make your selection of prospects within that spectrum. (Expect to pay anywhere from £5 to £50 an hour.) If possible, try to allow a bit of flexibility, should you find a web designer that you would like to work with - but happens to be a little bit beyond the budget you've set. 2. After processing your list of prospects through a financial filter (budget), ask to see samples of live websites. a. Visit these samples and test each website's functionality by clicking links, submitting forms, and interacting in chat rooms and/or message boards. Look for flawless exchange of data from one element of a web page to another. A couple of errors are to be expected and may not be the fault of the web designers - but instead, the fault of the web server or heavy internet traffic. If you notice errors, be sure and note whether they are the cause of faulty coding, or circumstances beyond the web designer's control. Select the web designers of the sites with the fewest errors as your new list of prospects. b. Next, check to see how long it takes for web pages to load. Although problems with a lengthy load time may lay with the server and not the website itself, sometimes the way a web page is designed can be the cause of the problem. Check a slow-loading website at a non-peak time to see if the problem still exists. If it does, the problem may be at the fault of the designer and indicate a bad prospect for your website design. A fast loading website, on the other hand, indicates not only a quick server, but more importantly, a web designer that can write clean and efficient HTML code. Place these web designers on your new lest of prospects. c. View the keywords, titles, and descriptions of the websites that you visit. Look at the HTML source code for the metatag sections and note whether the content of these tags are well-thought out, relevant to the website, and unique to each page. Next, search for these websites in popular search engines and note their ranking. A high ranking of a particular website indicates that its designer can and will attract visitors not only for the website that you've viewed, but also for your website, should you decide to hire its web designers. d. While you're at these websites, e-mail the website's administrator (not the web designers) and ask about the experience of working with their designer. Off-line, this is the same as checking a job applicant's references. A few questions you may want to ask are (1) Did the web designer stick to the contract?
(2) Was the web designer available when needed?
(3) What problems were resolved and/or not resolved? Other questions to ask may arise while browsing the website. Use the answers to these questions to help make your decision. 3. After narrowing your list of prospects from viewing work samples and feedback from actual clients, you now need to determine which of the remaining are capable of working with your own website style guide (and sticking to it). Your own website style guide should include conventions that you want use for formatting, directory and file naming, usage of multimedia, cgi and/or java programming, copyrights, and maintenance procedures after development. 4. Finally, select the web designers who agree to your billing and payment method - preferably ones who are willing to accept payment upon separate stages (milestones) of completed work. | 
