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How to Hire a Great Web Designer Bonus Text: What Your Web Designer Doesn't Want You to Know By Lori Goodman Prepare your ideas and content in advance. Preparation saves confusion, time and money for you, the client. I can't charge as much if you come prepared. You don't have to have everything written out completely, an outline of what you want the main pages to hold is helpful. The rules of web content have changed dramatically in recent years so I'm devoting an entire article to that subject to be published in the near future. This is counterintuitive to my slogan: "It's Your Website". Well, sort of but not exactly. As a designer I will listen intently to your ideas, not just tell you what I'm going to build for you - unless you want that. I can charge more when I come up with all the ideas for your website. Many designers know and anticipate that. You can beat them to the punch by being organized and clear on what you want ahead of time. Try not to micromanage. If you're a "hands on" personality type (I'm being nice!), please be respectful of your designer's time and talents. Trust them to do the work you're hiring them to do. Don't barrage them all day with emails, texts, change orders, "what do you think of this idea?" and phone calls every 5 minutes. Micromanaging or nit-picking over every crossed t and dotted i will cost you more time and money and cause some designers to throw up their hands and walk off the project. I've never personally done that (as much as I wanted to at times), though some of my peers have. You have to pay either way. When a client haggles and complains about my pricing or worse asks me to build a website for free (don't ask), there is always some major trade-off in quality or time. Cheap doesn't happen fast or brilliantly unless I'm highly inspired to do the work. Promising me future work is not inspiring and it won't earn you a discount. Referring a few clients to me before you ask for a favor or having me build your third huge project in a row for you will help tremendously in future price negotiations. I'm in business too and I love repeat business. Protect yourself from rip-off artists. Some designers charge for the entire project as a whole, some I know work on an hourly scale. The range of pricing is wide. For example, a simple one-page design built in Dreamweaver with an email address¹ can range from $250.00 - $500.00 or more. A 5-7 page design can run you anywhere from $1,200.00 (very basic) to $10,000 or more. Price will be dependent on how much extra stuff you include and how intricate the layout and navigation is. Simplicity is the way to keep costs down. Beware the designer who does a whole lotta talking and very little showing what they've done for other clients. I have a designer friend who charges as little as $500.00 for websites that are killer. He works for a major company as their in-house designer by day and does free-lance work on his time off, much to the chagrin of his family. He could bang out brilliance in his sleep. Another peer was charging slightly less, and surprisingly had tons of work - and his work was amateurish, even tacky. Nice enough guy but he just didn't have a design eye. He wasn't actually ripping people off but his value for the buck was far below Industry standard. It's a good idea to get a few different quotes for this reason. Most business have an ad budget. If you go in knowing what your limits are, you may be able to negotiate a lower price, especially when hiring an independent designer. Most designers are hungry right now. Don't be insulting by offering $100 for a Flash-based site, but you can expect to pay less than usual right now. If you don't pay for your website it probably won't go well. It's not easy for anyone who's working their tail off to stay in business to have to collect money for work that was done. It's not fun to pull a client's website down due to non-payment. I've heard of designers doing much worse things, like writing "special messages" to the offender all over the client's home page. That is rare now with ISP's more responsive than ever, and it's something I would never do but I have been forced to pull a website down for non-payment and that's not fun for anyone. In today's screaming fast Twitter-age when you don't pay, people - some designers included - will talk. Prevent this from happening in the first place. Hire a professional, do your homework up front, follow the 10 steps on the previous page and do the right thing by paying for services rendered. Ten times out of ten, people who have been screwed by a designer overlooked something basic that turned out to be a big deal in the end. Either that or they were impossible to work with - that happens too. Don't be that person. Ask about training. Some designers will happily train you to do simple things like uploading blog content, setting up email (though email is technically an ISP's area of expertise some designers like me offered to set up protocols, multiple accounts and test everything), registering a domain name and more. I prefer working with a couple of people all at once rather than come back a few times as staff changes. I can't charge as much for training as I can design work. And if you come unprepared or too tired to learn it will take longer and cost more. Most designers charge for their time. It depends on the project and the designer. If the project is big enough I often threw in a few "value added" extras as a bonus. If a website client also hosted with me I sometimes would renew their contract and send them a notice saying it was done. A couple of my favorite non-profits got a "Merry Christmas" card with their hosting bill taken care of for the month. Of course they had paid their bill on time the rest of the year. I've also learned that people love hearing that something is completed before they have to ask for it. Of course not all designers are as thoughtful and nice as I am! ;0) Request a backup copy of your website. I went over this on How to Hire a Great Web Designer. It bears mentioning again. Please get a copy of your website. If you don't and something goes wrong and you lose your web files or your hosting company says "Oops! Your web server's hard drive crashed and we aren't redundant" (it happens), you're in the weeds and I can charge you to pull you out. I probably won't but I could if you weren't a nice client to deal with. Ask your designer to provide you with a DVD copy with the completed website's files and a file that holds all of the ORIGINAL files for the graphics. If they say, "You can download them from the website" say: "I know I can but no thanks, I'd really appreciate a hard copy of my original files." Stick to your guns. Walk in with a brand new DVD and a nice box of chocolates if you have to. A Hershey bar probably won't do much but a nice $4.00 bag of Dove Dark Promises with a bow on it and a big sincere smile on your face just might. Saying please and thank you goes a long way, btw. Take the time to check your backup copy as soon as you return to your computer. You can do this by popping the media into your computer's CD/DVD player and navigating to the "index.html" (or .htm) file. Everything on your website, including images should come up perfectly. If it doesn't it's not a reasonable copy or your computer might be out of date. Before you request another copy, please ask someone to double-check on their computer or laptop. Also, some of your graphics files should end with .psd, .eps or something other than all ".jpg" or ".gif" (which work fine online but are uneditable). It's a great idea to label a manila file folder with your website's domain name to hold your CD or DVD backup copy, any notes, original content text, designer's name and number and so on and so forth. An extra copy on an external drive isn't a bad idea either. If you want to keep your passwords in the file please seal them in an envelope and write something across the seal in your handwriting, or hide them where only you can find them - and remember where you hid them! Keep track of conversations. I am religious about keeping track of both what you say and promise and what I say and promise. I keep track of dates, times, what was said and I prefer email so there's a hard copy of our conversations that we both have. This diffuses most potential disputes. People get busy and forget what they said or they meant to say. Make your life easier by opting for email instead of phone or texting which can be disturbing while a designer is working. Please (please!) don't tweak! I had the occasional client who wanted to save a buck by having someone they knew (who said they knew a lot about the web!) tweak their content and things went horribly wrong. Depending on the severity of the damage it can be more expensive for a designer to fix a broken website than build a new one. Either way it's going to cost. It's a lot of work. I charged more for fixes than new design because I absolutely despise fixing someone else's messed up code. If it gives me an instant migraine it's probably going to be expensive. If none of the back-end programmy-webby-stuff makes sense to you, or the person offering to help you can't show you great examples of the work they've done to other's websites, it's probably a good idea to leave changes and tweaks to the designer. Just say no to Uncle Timmy, he'll love you anyway! Things happen to computers. If you make changes that go awry or Uncle Timmy screws up your website you have your backup copy, right? Good job! Whew! Hard drives crash. Especially when your data is critical, like right before you send the most important client ever to your web-presentation. My dentist's computers were stolen along with all of his client's data (mine included). Things happen. If you're reading this you're on a computer and you know I'm preachin' to the choir! Originals rock. Keep them safe. It's easier and cheaper for a future designer to work with original graphics rather than re-create them from scratch. My clients routinely (without asking) got a copy of their website AND I kept backup hard-copies in a filing cabinet in my office so when a client needed to restore their files I had them up and running in minutes, usually without charge, 'cause I've been there and feel their pain. Designers and programmers have more crashes, equipment failures, blackouts than the average bear because we're techno-masochists - we know it's going to be painful yet we persist at pushing, stretching and pulling our resources beyond the brink. It tends to break things faster, so we know to have backups. You should think that way too, especially after you shelled out all that dough for your amazing new website.² Get typos fixed - today. Read your content today, not 6 months from now or worse, after a customer points out a big hairy typo on your Home page. We all make mistakes, including programmers who are on computers for long hours. I see triple after a few hours of programming. I get dyslexic when I'm overworked too. Your project is probably not the only one your designer is working on at any given time. Designers are the Kings and Queens of multi-tasking. Unfortunately our human brains can realistically only focus fully on one task at a time. You break it, you fix it! Alright, that's a little harsh but when (if) you discover mistakes on your website these should be addressed and fixed without an extra charge as long as 1. It's within a reasonable time-frame³; & 2. Nobody has "tweaked" your website after it was completed and paid for. From a designer's point of view, anyone you trust enough to work on your website after the fact can fix typos while they're in there playing. How do we know it was our mistake if someone else worked on your website after we completed it for you? I know my own code like a composer knows his own score. Seriously, I'm that much of a geek and besides, it's my job to know. Protect your email and FTP passwords. Some designers will offer to upload your website for you. If you feel more comfortable having them do it, go for it. They'll need your FTP password to do this. Keep track of everyone who has access to your passwords and login information during the project. It's OK to ask your designer where they store your password and who else has access to it. They should be all over this anyway. If they aren't there's a good chance your payment information won't be treated with any more respect and that's treading on even more dangerous ground. The designer may want to test any email or form auto-responders or scripts they've set up. If information from your website is going to your inbox your designer can get you on the phone to test the functionality live. You do not have to give the designer your email password. I suggest you don't unless you are savvy enough to change it again immediately after testing is complete. Of course if it's Uncle Timmy it's probably OK. If you're keen to what FTP is and feel comfortable using it, by all means upload your website and keep your password to yourself. If you do not wish to use FTP or care to know what it is, BE SURE TO GET YOUR FTP PASSWORD FROM YOUR DESIGNER!!!! This is how future files and content will be uploaded to your web server. Designers come and go. Chances are you will want something added or changed in the future and if someone else has to walk you step-by-step through getting your FTP password again that can add to the cost of doing business. Once your website is complete and paid for, change your password (FTP login) right away. Trust me, just do it. Copyright. Make sure the copyright statement is "www.yourwebaddress.com" and not the designer's name or link or an email address. Arrange in advance if they wish to include a link to their website. Some clients prefer not to, it can be a little tacky depending on the credibility of the design firm. You have a right to ask to see exactly what the designer is asking to put on your website. Also, you do not have to include the year next to the copyright notice. Truthfully, it makes remembering to do it and updating it on multiple websites every year a pain. Also, it dates your content when you don't bother keeping it current. Ditch the ads. Ads make a business look needy. Some businesses can get away with them. Most can't pull it off well enough to get away with it. When you get to over 1M unique visits annually, we'll talk about that again. If your business is getting that much traffic and you need ads to make up for not enough sales, something is wrong. There can be a balance if you're tasteful and careful about it. As far as a web designer putting their own plug on your website? Ewwww. I cringe when I see a designer's funky-looking ad lurking on the bottom of an otherwise decent, credible website. Except when done expertly, it looks cheesy. Good designers can do this tastefully. I am usually told to go ahead and do it, however I almost always refrain because it opens the doors to all the crack-pots and well-meaning people asking for freebies. Personal preference on that one. Know your rights. A work for hire becomes yours once it's paid for (read the contract carefully to avoid signing away your rights away inadvertently). Here's a little known fact straight from the Library of Congress Copyright Office. The second you save a work to your hard drive copyright automatically applies. I'll cover this in more detail in the future. I hope I haven't shattered your pristine image of the perfect web designer! ;0) We're all human too, and humans can be good, bad, fair, crooked and so on goes the wheel of life. Be careful, have some common sense, trust your instincts and arm yourself with good information. Be nice and as always, Have Fun! ~ Lori Goodman ¹ It's common knowledge that you should never put your email address on your website! There are email scramblers that create simple HTML code that can be easily embedded into any website. This will prevent you from being choked to death with SPAM. ² Speaking of re-creating and backups, if you do decide to get your hands dirty and work on your site yourself (awesome!!!) then be diligent about creating what I call an "ER file" (I was volunteering in an Emergency Room when I came up with that so it works for me). Call your emergency backup file whatever suits you. Always work from a copy of the file by "saving as" that file with a "1" or some other letter or the word "COPY" tacked on. You can remove the extra letters after you get it to work perfectly. You can also create a new folder and put copies of the original web files in it and work from them without changing the name - just in case you goof up and make a mess of your website you'll always a backup plan! ³ 3-4 months is reasonable to request typos or errors be corrected, a year later is not. Back to Articles [In the works: Find me on Facebook & Twitter for content updates] 
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