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Finding a Good Website Creator

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Great businesses often start with great ideas. Many times those great ideas turn into websites before the idea has been fully developed. I for one think this is a great start, especially when it comes to testing the market, but many times this task can be overwhelming. I get asked the question often as to whether or not a designers rates are worth it or not or if I can explain exactly what the offere means. Often times they(the developer/designer) throws fancy words out there like XHTML and CSS. Whereas these may not be strange terms to you and I, those not in a technology field may have no clue what those terms mean.

Just the other day a colleague of mine sent this question to me.

“The developer said that for $250, I would get a unique website of 4 to 5 static pages and 30 days of consulting.” At first that doesn't sound like a bad deal does it.

They then went on to add:

“There are of course add-ons but we don't want any of them. What does it mean that we can be fully integrated with a shopping cart when we choose one of their recommended hosting packages?”

Here is where the rubber meets the road, and I immediately stop listening. For $250 your aren't getting too much, in fact you may be getting more of a headache than anything else. Webdesign is just like anything else that needs to be constructed, You Get What You Pay For. I've seen it over and over again, and it's the truth. Nothing comes cheap anymore, especially not the good stuff. This is why it's important to pay for webdesign that fits your particular need.

Here is my list of things one should keep in mind when selecting someone to build your website.

1. Portfolio: Always ask to see a portfolio of their work. When looking at the portfolio see if the type of sites they are designing are close to your industry and look at how different each of the sites are. What you want to avoid is a designer who changes the look and feel of website by only changing the graphics. If you truly want something unique you'll want someone with a diverse set of skills.

2. Support: Does your designer/webmaster just create the site and then leave? Is it going to be up to you to implement the whole thing once they are done? If you are going to spend money with this person, you want to know that they are going to be around to support this site once the creation part is over. It's doubtful that your going to spend your time adding to the website when you've already got someone that knows the ins and out of the entire site. Make sure that there is some form of support in this contract.

3. Hosting: Be vary careful when it comes to hosting plans. Make sure that your site isn't being hosted in someone's basement or worse yet, college dorm room (Yes it has happened). Because when something happens, and it will happen, your website is going to be down, and when it's down it means your business is closed. Hosting these days is cheap, I have some clients on $36 a year plans, and I've never had an issue. It's worth it to look around for good hosting, although you'll want to make sure you check with the creator so you know the technology you're going to need to keep things running.

4. Price: Here is the big daddy of all the questions. How much should I pay and what should I get. That answer is harder than one might imagine, and the truth to the answer is “It Depends”. If you have a highly customized site, that incorporates things like flash, Ajax and form submission, then you should pay more than the guy that only needs 5 simple pages that only have text. It's pretty basic, the more you need the more you'll pay, the less you need the less you'll pay. Keep in mind that the experience of the person you're about to hire has a lot to do with it. The more experienced they are the higher the rate.

As an example here is what I charge to do a simple 5 page static site and the services I offer for the price of $850.

1. Customized look and feel with your logo and branding on 5 content centric pages.

2. Email integration

3. Full scale testing in the most widely used browsers: (FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome)

4. 30 Days of free content changes. Calendar business days.

5. Deployment to a webhosting package. (Additional Fee for hosting)

6. Full documentation

7. Unlimited email support for 30 days.

8. Always available to answer questions.

So far this process has worked really well for me, and my customers seems to really enjoy the fact that I've mapped it all out for them. Rarely do I have the situation where my client needs more than 30 days of technical help, especially when it comes to simple sites. Of course my offerings are different when it comes to custom development and the integration of a CMS, but for simple website design and creation, this seems to be a fair price. Yes there are cheaper options, and of course there is always the do it yourself method, but from my experience the amount of time someone spend on doing it themselves, they could have been out selling or doing something else more productive.

Either way it's up to you, but this is just my short list of things you should find out when hiring someone to create your website.

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