Is your web designer capable?

In the advent of free internet trade, a lot of people from web developers to the non-techie-would-be website owners will, at one point in their career, hire a web designer to make websites or help out in making the website of their valued clients. Websites such as project bidding portals where freelancers will offer their lowest bids on a posted project has been a popular source of cheap freelancers as well as classified ads and forums. There have been a lot of capable programmers in these types of sites, but there are, unfortunately, a lot of bad apples in the batch as well. As clients want low-cost, high-quality websites, they tend to look for the best bargain but equate one designer equal to another. Often, clients would look at low professional fees over expertise and capability. And this has been the cause of major headaches for many clients wanting to have good looking, stable, secure and cost efficient websites.

When a client cuts down on expertise, he will end up spending more than what the project is worth in the long run as he will need to have re-designs done, bugs fixed, and in many cases, a re-write of the entire site. Often than not, he will look into other programmers to finish (or re-make) the website he had just built. If he gets another low-quality web developer the second time around, he will face the same problems and the cycle goes on until common sense kicks in and he starts thinking of hiring a capable expert anyway. Something that he should have done from day one.

While there are good bargains at the low price range, a client who is not too tech savvy would not know the difference between someone who is a master of his craft and mediocrity. In this article, I would like to share with you a few signs that helps to distinguish one from another. But please take this as guidelines only as each web designer is unique and some of the things mentioned may not be applicable to your expert.

Does your web designer create their own materials?

When we hire a web design firm, we expect them to create their own designs. Website design is the number one reason why you hire a design company - for their designs! Believe it or not, but a lot of website design companies will use themes downloaded or purchased from other websites, change the styles a bit, add the clients content and charge $400 and up for it. This may be acceptable if they have created the themes themselves, or if they are actually a web-programming company(and marked themselves this way) rather than a design company and needs something to work with. But for a web designer or web design firm to call themselves such must be capable enough to create their own stuff rather than cut and past other people's work (dosen't matter if they paid for it or got it free).

Can they really do it all?

You got your would-be web developer's contact information. You have set up the initial meeting, and you give him your requirements. Unless you are dealing with an established big company or a really great expert, chances are your designer would not be able to everything under the sun. If they admit that they lacks skills in flash or do not do PHP work or or some other things, do not take this as a sign of incompetence, but take it as professionalism on their part by being straight forward. The reality of the industry is that no designer can do everything imaginable, but a good designer can do what he does very well. And that is what you pay him for - his expertise on what he is capable of doing. While a web designer should know HTML and CSS flawlessly, he may lack skills in programming, 3d graphics, or even flash (you should really get a dedicated flash designer into your team if you want flash anyways) and these weakness are perfectly fine as long as you are looking at web design services. But if he claims to know it all, including database engineering, video editing, java, asp, network administration and anything you ask him to do, take this as a red flag.

Do they know the basics?

While it is okay for your designer to tell you that they prefer to use Dream Weaver or loves to use Microsoft's Expression Web to build websites, it is not okay if they tell you they can only work with these tools. Any HTML/CSS web developer, who can only work with a certain software and nothing else will mean only one thing - that they do not understand HTML or CSS basics. A web designer should know the basics - how to do layouts by hand, using only a basic text editor as a tool. Someone who knows the basics will know what exactly goes into your website, he would know that tables look pretty but are actually bad for your website, he would know the difference between post and get methods in forms, and he would know when to use a certain doctype. He would know things that someone who only relies on a certain tool would probably never ever know exists.

Is the price too good to be true?

There are capable website designers who offer reasonable professional fees. But there are some web designers who offer fees that are too good to be true. Before jumping the gun and hire the first guy that will offer his services for pennies, be sure to use common sense. A lot of people (including most new website developers) often underestimate the work and expertise involved in creating quality websites and have either under-priced themselves unintentionally, or just wants to take in as much clients as they could without any intent of dedicating any soul to the art. Chances are, because of seemingly too good to be true prices, these guys have quite a lot of clients in their hands at any one time that making your project a priority is almost impossible. To know if a cheap website quote is too cheap, read the article about why you should not compromise expertise over price.

When everything is said and done, the web design industry is like any other industry. While there may be good bargains every now and then, usually we end up getting what we pay for.