How to Find a Website Designer: A Step-by-Step Guide
Aahh, so you have finally decided to find a website designer for your project? But you have no clue on how to navigate through endless options and applicants. No worries, we’ve got you covered.
The impression of your business depends heavily on your company’s website design. The web designer has to make prospects stay on your website, increasing your chances of conversions and users coming back for more.
That is why businesses spend big bucks on a website's UI & UX design. However, it often clouds their judgment of what defines a good website designer. Sometimes, they end up spending a lot of time, money, and resources, but can’t get what they were hoping for.
So how do you surf through an ocean of search results and applications? How do you select the best website designer for your project?
To make smart and calculated decisions, we will be sharing with you a step-by-step breakdown on finding a good web developer, or agency with the right skill set and affordable pricing.
Why Find a Website Designer?
You are ready to start working on your website, but writing the code or buying the domain is not everything, you need a dedicated resource to start planning site structure.
Or it could be that you already have a website, but you don’t know how to draw conversions from it and need to redesign your website.
Here are 4 reasons as to why hire a website designer:
User-Friendly Design
The first step in maintaining a prospect on your website is an attractive visual design and improving user interface perception. A website designer can structure your website in a way that is easy to read, skim, and understand.
Creating a smooth user flow makes visitors understand what you are selling and creates a lasting impact. With global user accessibility, you can enhance the look, interactivity, and feel of the website.
Improve Site Speed and Performance
Online visitors tend to bounce back or shift to another tab after 3-5 seconds of unresponsiveness or after reading messed up content.
A web designer can help create fast loading pages, responsiveness, and user journey. With a fusion of fast-loading web pages and vibrant designs, this becomes a wholesome browsing experience.
Drive Conversions
Improving site search, CTAs, forms, and other interactive elements can help in managing lead generation so you never lose a client again.
By carefully planning a visual design, you can lead the eyes of visitors and make them click on your desired action, and maybe add a chatbot or support system to respond to every query and make sure you don’t lose potential clients. This is where a designer comes in with his expertise in website conversion.
The primary conversion for a lead generation site is to collect contact information like name, email address, and phone number. A skilled web designer can help create such forms and pop-ups that can help you build a client base and kickstart your lead gen process.
This proves to be extremely beneficial in PPC B2B lead generation, where pages have to be short, sweet, and quick to load. Otherwise, the users bounce back and you never see them again.
The website designer needs to be extremely skilled at integrating a combination of different interactive elements and CRO marketing to produce a website that acts like a customer magnet. A website that drives users to our desired actions and generates leads.
SEO Rankings
Upon seeing a fantastic combination of design, user functionality, and growing conversions, the search engines recognize your usefulness and tend to rank your website higher on SERPs.
A website designer achieves this by creating an excellent layout/ sitemap that brilliantly displays a response (a part of your web content) to a relevant search query.
In addition to this, the designer needs to blend UI interactive elements and powerful functionality together, to make users stay on your site, and even better, make them visit your site again!
All these activities are observed by search engines and it ultimately improves your search rank and visibility.
How to Find a Website Designer?
In this section, we will be discussing how to find a website designer who is a perfect fit for your project needs and budget.
Here are some things to keep in mind while choosing a web designer:
Set a Budget for Website Design
Before you dive into your search for web designers, you need to define your budget plans.
There is no industry-standard pricing or cost to design a website. These costs can vary on several factors, but you should have an idea of what your upper limit is.
This budget determines the level of your website design and who will build it.
Choose the Type of Design Company
The good thing is, that the web design market is highly saturated. You will have tons of options to choose from.
The most popular providers of web design services are:
- Freelancers
- Local Web designers
- Full-Service Design Agencies
Now how to choose a website design company that works best for you? Let's look at each one.
Freelancers
The freelance market is brimming with highly skilled individuals of varying capabilities. Creation site web freelance is the most affordable option.
Here are some Pros and Cons of working with freelance website designers:
Pros | Cons |
Personalized Approach | Limited Resources |
Flexible Timings | Longer Turn-around-time (TAT) |
Direct line of communication | Risk of inconsistency |
Specialized Expertise | Lack of accountability |
Extremely Affordable | Limited Scope of Services |
Local Web Design Firm
Hiring a local web design firm has several advantages over freelancers but it comes with a few drawbacks as well. Depending on your project, local web design services can provide you with everything under one roof.
Pros | Cons |
Wide range of resources | Higher Costs |
More Reliable Availability | Less Personalized Attention |
Consistency and Quality Control | Longer Administrative process |
Broad array of specialized services | Chances of Miscommunication |
Accountability and Support | Less Flexibility |
Full Service Design Agencies
As the name suggests, full-service design agencies also provide other web-related services than just design.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
- B2B & B2C Integrations
- Landing Page Designs
- Website Management
- Web Hosting
- And more!
The good thing about hiring full-service agencies is that they cost less than specialized agencies. It’s not that they are not as good as specialized ones. Quite the opposite. They are much better because their web design services are enhanced by collaborating with multiple teams.
The inclusion of other web-related services makes the total cost go down plus you get the best version of every aspect.
Contact WebDigitalSphere for affordable web design and SEO services.
Check their Portfolio
Take a good look at their portfolio before you contact a web design company. See if they have worked on web design projects similar to yours and how well they have performed.
Reading their case studies helps you deduce if they are the right fit for you. Even if they haven’t partnered up with a company like yours, see their design style to see if it suits your project needs.
Read Client Testimonials
Do read client testimonials/reviews to see how it's like working with a particular web designer, or company. This gives you insights from the clients’ perspective and what level of work they can provide.
Website designers or companies with a lot of growing reviews means that they are getting popular due to their expertise and customer service.
From several positive testimonials, you can deduce that you are going to get outstanding service as well.
Check their Pricing Structure
You want a web designer or company that you can afford while keeping the web design in high quality and performance.
See their web design pricing and discuss with your team what pricing plans work best within your budget.
Now comes the tricky part. The costs of building a web design depend on your requirements and site features (amongst several other factors). This includes number of pages, feature complexity, integrations, and more. The cost of hiring a particular web designer depends on skillset, location, hourly rates, and whatnot.
For example, B2B website development costs can amount from 5000 to 100,000 dollars. You need to carefully view their eCommerce web design packages, or the best way is to schedule a call/meeting to discuss the matter in details.
In addition to that, most designers or agencies do not publish their rates. You have to contact them for a complete breakdown of potential costs and web design package inclusions. The absolute total cost can never be precise, only a max estimate can be calculated. So keep that in mind while you discuss the web design budget and request for absolute transparency during the development & design phase.
Ask About their Web Design Process
Once you have successfully selected the right designer or agency, it’s time to ask them about their design process. Many aspects of development and design can be hard to understand if you are not familiar with the industry.
So to not get overly charged, and to maintain a transparent relationship, it is advised that you demand complete information about each of the website development phases and tech stack being used.
The best designers or agencies will gladly sit down with you and explain to you what they do, how they do it, and how their services will benefit your business.
If they talk big, or intentionally use terms that you don’t understand, slow them down, and ask them to explain in detail. If they fail to do so, it’s a big no-no. You should be careful moving forward with them, or even better, try finding another transparent web design option.
Ask for References
When you have found someone to work with, ask them for references from your industry.
Let’s say you are in an eCommerce business, ask them if they have worked on any eCom stores or similar websites.
This is a great way of knowing what level of service you can expect for your project or maybe they have evolved with time since then, and can provide better design services.
Moreover, this acts as a background check for their authenticity and experience.
Explore Multiple Options
Good web design companies or designers won’t pressure you into signing a contract right away. They are aware that you are exploring your options about the design team and pricing.
Spend time looking for various options and comparing prices to find the best possible solution that guarantees quality, affordability, and transparency.
Many agencies will give you a free quote, you should take advantage of this offer to make better calculated and informed decisions.
Questions to Ask a Website Designer During Interview
The next and final step is to ask some questions from shortlisted candidates. These questions need to be well-thought-out and should serve the purpose of drawing meaningful insights about their expertise and work.
Here are some important Web designer interview questions to help you start digging:
- What services do you offer?
- What is your experience with my industry?
- Can you show me the latest website that is relevant to my project? / Explain to me the process when designing this website.
- Will you provide a detailed proposal and how much will it cost?
- What will be the estimated time for my project completion?
- Which CMS (Content Management System) do you use?
- Will my team be able to make changes to the site after it gets published?
- Do you offer post-launch/ongoing website maintenance?
- Will I have complete ownership of my website, domain, and assets?
- What do you need before starting this project?
- Will I be able to scale my website as my business grows?
You can further extrapolate these questions to draw specifics. Make sure you checkmark all these questions during the interview.
After being thorough, you can select the best ones from shortlisted candidates or agencies, to onboard them to your team.
Where to Find a Web Developer?
If you are looking for a web designer, try these places to choose candidates:
Hiring Sites: Use websites like Upwork, Fiverr, and similar others to find freelance designers.
Search Engine: You can discover website designers or agencies by searching on Google.
Review Sites: A great way of finding reliable design agencies is Clutch. You can view their ratings, pricing, reviews, and work.
Professional Circle: Find someone reliable and skilled in your network. Or, ask them for recommendations on finding a good web designer.
Book a free consultation with us to find what options work best for your project.
WebDigitalSphere has a diverse pool of website designers who are skilled at creating jaw-dropping website designs. Leverage the talent and expertise of our design team to create an outstanding presence online.
Contact us or fill out the form to get in touch with an expert. Get detailed web design consultancy.
Find a Website Designer – with WebDigitalSphere
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