The current demand for the work of web designers is on a dramatic rise. Sometimes it is also possible, mainly because of competition, that the designer does not have any work or the designer would like to take a break and do something other than the usually web designing work that he/she does.

If you are a web designer, here are some ways to keep yourself busy.

– Enhancing or upgrading the knowledge

Reading books is one way of enhancing or upgrading your knowledge about anything. For the designers and developers of today there are many books, tutorials and resources on the internet. When you invest your time in these sorts of activities you get good returns in the longer run. The technology related to designing and developing is constantly evolving. To keep up with the changes in the technology one needs to read books, follow the tutorials or attend to other workshops and training sessions.

– Writing

In your spare time you can write blogs or submit your writings to any magazine. There are two types of blog writing. One is writing blogs for your own website and the other is writing blogs for other website. When you write it for your own website you increase your network and get paid over a prolonged time. On the other hand when you write blogs for other website you are paid lump sum and do not have to wait for its final results. You can also keep yourself busy by writing articles to be submitted to the magazine. When your articles are published in the magazines you get recognition for your contribution. This sort of work not only increases your credibility but also increases your network.

– Try something new

Most of the designer and developers after getting used one content management system, do not find any need of learning other content management systems. It is possible that the CMS that you know may not be the best fit for the current project that you have at hand. In these sorts of circumstances it is better to try some new CMS. Knowing something new never goes in vain. If the new CMS is not useful in the current project it may be of help in your later projects. This can save your time and resources too.

– Building relationships

Whenever you are free, try to contact your earlier clients and maintain relations with them. Offer them help if needed. Even if you are not offering the service they need try to convince them that you can arrange those services from reliable sources. The more the network you have the more work you can have. When you maintain relations you can also seek references and recommendation from them. This can make your services known to a lot of people. Your network can also be increased through active participation on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

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Joomla! is a content management system for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets as well as a Model-view-controller (MVC) Web Application Development framework. The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. It is written in the PHP programming language and uses the MySQL database system to store information. Joomla is the result of a fork of Mambo. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Joomla is free software.

This is the Wikipedia definition of Joomla, not bad, but also maybe not so clear. In layman’s terms, CMS provides you or your clients with a very easy to use and manage system of adding, editing and creating content. That, is CMS in it’s most basic form. Great for your client as it means they don’t need to pay someone $60 an hour to manage their sites content anymore, they can do it themselves. Might seem like a disadvantage at first, until you realize it’s an amazing sales tool!

From a web design standpoint Joomla is an amazing piece of work. One of the greatest features of Joomla is the ability to provide your clients with thousands of free plugins, modules and components for their sites. These things all extend the basic functionality of Joomla, allowing you to create anything from a small business website to a fully functioning corporate website with an integrated backend. The majority of these can be downloaded for free, offering your clients feature rich and interactive tools for their site bound to keep their customers engaged and coming back for more. Others do have a fee but are often times more reliable as well as more feature rich.

Web Design has never been so easy! Not only are you able to develop amazing websites, Joolma extensions also allow you to do some great things when it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This way, you can add on an extra service for Marketing Related work as opposed to just Web Design. Are you sold yet, and want to know where to get started? Stay tuned for the next article that will help you get on your way!

Choosing the right web design company is crucial for your small business. You need to do enough research before you choose a web design company, because a well structured website that has a good design and layout attracts, engages and retains visitors; whereas a poorly designed website can drive away your prospective customers. Therefore, you need to be sensible while choosing a web designing company for your business.

In this article, we discuss some of the things you need to consider before you hire a web design company for your small business website.

Technical and marketing skills:

A good company will have skilled professionals in web design and development, SEO and content. These are very important apply while designing your website. While these are the minimum set of criteria, creativity is an important thing to consider when choosing a company. Check for the company’s portfolio (list of websites designed already).

Designing SEO friendly websites:

Creating an attractive website and being online is not enough. It needs to be such that search engines find your website and rank it. For this, the website should have solid content and good images, limited use of Java, easy and simple navigation buttons, etc. These features are essential to create optimal user experience. Unless the company has some knowledge on SEO and how it works, it cannot design SEO friendly websites.

Designing according to your specifications:

Every small business has its own needs and specifications. Unless the company is professional enough to consider your specifications, you cannot get what you expect. The web design company should be able to tailor the service for you. Also, note their way of communication – how promptly, effectively and appropriately they are communicating.

Budget constraints:

Budget is always a constraint for small businesses to expand their marketing. So, while choosing a web designing company, make sure that they are offering services within your budgets. Some companies offer special packages to small businesses, you may get better services at lower prices from them.

Repute and experience:

There are thousands of service providers. Identifying a good one is often a tricky task. Research online thoroughly. It is important to consider repute and experience of the company.

Trust between the designer and business is important. Mutual trust is important as one party collaborates with the other.

Delivering results on time:

Getting your website completed on time is very important. For this, the service provider needs to provide service optimally. On-time delivery of results is indicative of professionalism on the part of the service provider.

Hope these things help you choose a good web designer company. You can also recruit an in-house designer, provided you have some knowledge on web designing to guide him in a right way.

Real is such intrinsic part in recent times due to increasing demand of on-line services of properties for sale, buy or mortgage that have never bounced back with undying velour. Dealing with property is very intense matter and nowadays wide range of properties are introduced everyday and real agents are those serving finest negotiation for demanded prime properties for all mediums. Providing services on-line is technologically booming and need immense development to pace up with rivals in the field of real.

Real web designer are essential to seek to have an effective and efficient website building that enables millions of visitors to approach the web page and acquire appropriate information for services offered. It is not just the matter of web it stands for the well planned and systematically defined approach for search engine optimized real web. This feature enable to real web page to appear in top ranking of search engine to get to know the basic functioning via expert professional real web from real web designing company.

Wide range of services is offered on hire real web via hire real company. These services are so refined that allow the website of real agent to be build in way to be seek by maximum of the visitors smoothly and experts assistance assured. Certain beneficial services of hire real company are mentioned as follows:

Search engine friendly real web is a function that allows the business website to be in package of top ranking in search via visitors without traffic flood and have smoother access. Real rovides huge deals that demands convenient access and easy approach that is made easier via hire real company. As the existing competition on search on website such as Google, Bing and yahoo is fierce.

Real business blogging is services provide by real ompany for real usiness to promote the services and functioning of real business in systematic manner designed via professional experts of real web designing company to allow you to be known to the maximum of the visitors and get beneficial converting contracts with attractive and defined featured web development via real business blogging. To standing best top rankers in real business blogging to carry elite business demand professional services to demonstrate well about your real business and services that is possible via hire real estate web designer from real web designing company.

Customer care services are offered for the convenient approach for the development of real business that enables varied services featured:

1.Answer customer emails and calls

2.Ecommerce customer care

3.Help desk customer care

4.Real ppointment setting staff and live answering

5.Towing business live answering and dispatching services

6.Cab business live answering and dispatching services

Live answering services, this feature is absolutely a working successive key for your realusiness development that enables you to provide your client timely beneficial and satisfactory expert assistance on call. Live answering services offers quality assistance to the client base 24×7 including holidays for your real estate business. Either you are starter for the real estate business development or want to cut down your reception staff cost live answering call is best solution to acquire via hire real estate web designing company.

Hire real web designer from real web designing company get to know the business and other prospects for the real e business development and help to reach prospective clients via search engine and efficient web development and designing services. For more info visit http://www.businesslinknetwork.com

Maybe you’ve heard it before, or maybe you’ve been face-to-face with this enemy yourself. Internet Explorer (IE) is often a web designer’s worst nightmare, as it is always a little behind the curve, a little quirky, and way too popular to be ignored. The Windows operating systems all come with IE pre-installed, which means that a very large portion of the populace regularly use this browser instead of switching over to a better browser. Maybe it’s too much of a hassle, maybe they’re not computer-savvy enough to know how to switch or even why they should. Now it may seem ironic, but I am currently writing this post using IE, but actually, the very reason why I am doing so is because I am a web developer. I know that if I can get a site to work properly in Internet Explorer, it’s going to work even better in Firefox.

Some web designers choose to ignore IE completely, letting their visitors know that they had best download Firefox or Chrome if they would like to experience the site to its fullest. But with almost a fifth of internet users using IE, this solution may not be the wisest course to take. Others may choose to make their websites compliant to IE9 but not older versions (since IE9 is almost as good as as Firefox, Chrome, and other standards-compliant browsers); but again, we have almost 9% of users using IE8, which is more than the 6.4% using IE9.

So what’s to be done? As a web designer, all is not lost. There are several things that one can do to ensure that a design works well in all browsers, and degrades nicely if it uses elements not supported in IE, especially those older than IE9. I must admit that I refuse to try to make a site compatible for IE6 or older; to try to do that would be to complicate the code with all kinds of hacks, and it’s pretty safe to ignore IE6 at this point. In April of 2012, the percentage of users using IE6 was 0.7%, and considering that these users should probably be accustomed to broken sites by now, I choose to ignore that fringe population.

So here’s a short list of things to think about when designing a site to be truly cross-browser compatible:

1. Write valid, W3C standards-compliant code, and validate it with the W3C validator. You can write in HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0, and as long as it validates and uses good coding practices (such as using (X)HTML for structure and CSS for design), it should appear pretty consistently in all browsers, including IE7/8. I make no comment on using HTML5 as I do not currently work with it, but from sites I have seen and a little research I have done, HTML5 is not exactly compatible with older browsers, and particularly IE. You can also validate your CSS and scripts, so be sure to go ahead and do that.
2. Test in multiple browsers, including older versions of IE. Here is where I must mention the Internet Explorer developer tools for those who have not discovered this handy little system that IE, as well as other browsers like Firefox, have. In IE9 you can find these in the Tools Button in the toolbar, and then click F12 Developer Tools, or just simply hit F12 on your keyboard. There are a lot of handy tools here, from disabling scripts or CSS (try disabling CSS and Javascript sometime to see how your site would look without them; this gives an idea of how screenreaders will read your site), to validating your code. There is also a browser mode that allows you to select IE9 compatibility mode, IE8, or IE7 (unless you have IE8 installed on your machine, in which case it will allow you to select IE7 and IE6). So with this tool you can test your site on the older versions of Internet Explorer without dragging out your old computer with the old browser still installed.
3. If you are on a Mac or for some other reason can’t get Internet Explorer, you could use a renderer like netrenderer. It only gives a screenshot of your site, and does not allow you to test interaction (even something as simple as scrolling down the page), but it will give a rough idea of how well you’re doing. For more realistic ways of testing, you might try a Google search of “Internet Explorer emulator.” There are other options, but as I don’t own a Mac, I have not bothered to test any of them out.
4. Consider alternate ways of coding your site. Maybe instead of using CSS to make rounded corners and shadows and gradients, you can go old-school and use images. Often images can be made small enough that it doesn’t take that much longer to load, and the result is a beautiful site that looks exactly the same in all browsers.

It’s a really nice feeling, after having coded the thing, to open it up in IE7 and see that, amazingly, it looks just the same as it does in Firefox. Now that’s an accomplishment. And even more importantly, your site can impress all of your users, and not just those with better browsers. Unless that’s your target audience of course.

Like going on a blind date, choosing the right web designer can be an adventure fraught with false hope.

Unlike a big corporation, a small business generally has a tight budget–especially when it comes to advertising and promotion–to engage a big web design agency to serve their online marketing needs.

With the understanding that a cheap-looking website is not the best way to represent your business–or that you do not have unlimited funds to throw at web designers on the off-chance that you’ll get something that resembles what you want–there exist good small design studios and professional freelance web designers with reasonable rates, fortunately.

Here are some tips on how to choose the right one to meet your small business needs.

Identify the Fake Web Designers

Check out their portfolio!

Do they look professional? Is the style of the designer something you would like to have on your own site? Are they logical, easy to use, and provide what’s needed to help customers achieve their (and the clients’) goals? That means that a lot of business development has gone into them.

Web Designers vs Web Programmers

There are many web designers who are actually programmers who know little, if at all, about design. They use templates that are created by other professional designers. Unfortunately, templates aren’t customized to your unique business.

Moreover, with advances in software applications, it is easier than ever to create and build a website. These software can help anyone build a website without knowing a thing. However, there is a distinct difference between creating and designing one.

Design, be it web or print, is about communication. Without the necessary design knowledge how could the programmers do an effective job communicating with your prospective customers?

How Can Good Design Help Your Business

Design is about you–what you know, what you see, and what you have to say. Behind every design is a vision, a purpose, a reason to be. Web design is not about decoration but communication; about making your words and vision visible, giving it form and body for all the world to see.

While the sales copy of your website remains vital for the effective selling of your products or services, the use of typography, color, graphics and layout help lead your prospects read and navigate your website.

This makes your page a pleasure to read and increases their overall user-experience.

A professional, well-designed website has been proven to increase sales!

Web Design Process

The web design process is also a matter of planning, what to include and what to exclude, good design, appealing text, how to sell, what business plan to follow, and more.

Like any other marketing medium, it requires a lot of work by individuals who understand what visitors and the search engines like to see: properly organized text. Combining a nice layout with SEO isn’t easy, make sure the designer understands both the human and search components.

The result is pages that perform well for visitors and rank high for specific keywords.

No doubt, there are many who can turn out professional websites, but few who will volunteer to spend dozens of hours consulting with a client, designing a clear and unconfusing website, and sweating over ad copy, pictures and all the major and minor details — in essence, creating a online marketing vehicle.

Online Marketing

The number one mistake that most first time web site owners make is that they don’t know what to do with their site after it’s designed. It is very possible to have a beautiful site designed for you and no one ever sees it.

A website is merely another means of marketing your products or services. With hundreds, if not thousands, of websites sprouting out everyday, competition is fierce. Having a “web presence” for your business has virtually become an understatement.

A good designer will not only help you create a professional looking site, they will also ensure that your site gets a good ranking with the search engines so that your site can be easily found online. Make sure that your designer will optimize your site for the search engines and submit it to the major search engines. Your website need to rank reasonably well in search engines.

Moreover, small business should seriously look into harnessing the power of the social media and sound web marketing design to increase the exposure of your services and products to extend your reach.

Is a Website Just a website

In the online world, traffic and targeted prospects is the life blood for you website. A pretty website becomes a white elephant if no customer visits it.

Does the web designer practice what he preaches? How much traffic is his website receiving?

To get an estimation of the amount of traffic, go to http://www.alexa.com, enter his URL to get the traffic details. You’ll see the Traffic Rank for his website. As a general rule of thumb, if the traffic ranking isn’t within the 1st Million globally (e.g. Yahoo ranks no. 1), then his online marketing effort certainly has much room for improvement, even for his own business website.

Offline Marketing

Small businesses exist in numbers far larger than big corporations.

It is ever more important for your business to stand out from your competition with a professional, consistent image–your corporate identity, namely from your web design, company logo, to the offline marketing collateral such as business card and flyer designs etc.

Having the same company to design both your online and offline marketing collateral have significant advantages of consistency and cost.

Word of Mouth and Testimonials

Word of mouth is a good indication of someone who knows his stuff.

If he comes strongly recommended by trusted friends or family members, chances are he’s created design solutions that work for their business quite well. Ask them whether it was a good experience or not.

Most designers will have testimonials from previous clients on their website. It’s a good idea to see what his customers are saying about his services. Follow the web links and try contacting some of them. You should have a feel after talking to one or two. This also ensures the testimonials are not fake ones that were simply “made up”.

Chemistry is Key

You are going to have to share aspects of your business, from visions to operations to preferences to competition, with this person.

So it’s important that you feel comfortable enough with him to be honest about your business details and goals, as well as ask as many questions about his advise as you need to. Does the designer seem friendly and are they willing to answer all of your questions? Does he respond promptly to your emails and/or phone calls?

A good designer will keep in touch with you every few days, at least. You don’t want to get down to the final days of creating the site only to find out you don’t like it!

Look out for his modus operandi during the first meeting. He should be asking you extensive, detailed questions about your requirements and goals, in order to analyze your needs.

Someone who is more interested in telling you the different design packages he can offer you is probably more concerned about making a quick buck.

Website Maintenance

A common issue with most small business is a lack of technical skills. What happens if you want to update the content after the project has been completed? Can you update it yourself without any HTML knowledge?

Content Management System

Would your website be built on a content management platform such as WordPress or Joomla? This will allow you to update, edit and add pages on your own without going back to the web designer. Thus saving time and cost.

Engage your Customers via Blogs

If you are marketing your business on the web and you don’t have a blog, you will always be beaten down by your competition.

A Blog platform allows you to do things no one else in your market can do with static websites. This means you don’t just have a web site, you have a search engine magnet and an interactive community builder that will drive targeted, willing-to-buy visitors to your site.

Price

This is an important factor for any small business to consider.

Although there is no clear-cut rule as to what an “average” price for web design is. In most cases, you get what you pay for. You are paying for this his expertise, time and experience.

Be realistic about your budget. You may not have all the bells and whistles such as animation and special effects.

It is more important to create a successful website that has a good position in the search engine and one that you are very happy with the look and function of than to save a couple of bucks. If you get a good site, your site will be able to grow with your company and, hopefully, that’s for a very long time!

The savvy, experienced web designer can implement your ideas and enhance them, spotting possible pitfalls and making recommendations along the way–and he’ll help you to understand the procedure and give you the benefit of his experience and understanding of the Web, so that you come away not only with a website, but with an enhanced understanding of the Web and online business. In short, he’ll work with you and be effective.

When you decide to launch yourself on the Internet, you should not attempt to make the web site yourself unless you have taken some kind of training in how to create web sites. Your website is your online reception where potential clients will come to find out how you can help them, and it needs to look professional. Although you can pick a designer anywhere in the world, a local based provider has the edge even it does cost a little more than hiring someone in a developing country.

For example, if you are located in Manchester, choosing a web design Manchester based means that you can either meet face-to-face or at the very least talk over the telephone about your business, what it does, and the kind of web site you are looking for to help promote it.

Going to a local designer can even save you money because you will have a web designer who understands what you want. You can trust that the web designer is going to give you the kind of quality you expect because you are from the same location with similar cultural expectations.

There should be a good line of communication between you and the designer because you both speak the same language. You should be able to discuss your web site needs and have the local web designer understand exactly what you are talking about.

If a problem does occur however, using a local business, means that you are more in control of the situation. You operate in the same location and there before you will be able to find the designer and have them either change the design to fit with the requirements you discussed at the beginning of the project.

If that does not work you will have the legal system to fall back on, which if you have paid a deposit and the work was not completed will be extremely useful. The further away the web designer you choose is located, the less chance you have of getting your deposit back.

So when you're ready to take the plunge and join the Internet business community, choose a local web designer. You might want to attract a global client base, but when it comes to getting your message out there, a Manchester based company will give you more peace of mind than one at the other side of the country never mind the other side of the world .

Web designers are 'two a penny' as they say. For the consumer this means one thing: choice. And having choices of course means that you can pick the best. But to know 'the best' you have to know what you look for. In the next series of posts I'm going to discuss and highlight some of the more important things you should take into consideration when choosing a web designer.
How experienced is the web designer?

Experience is generally a valued accomplishment that employers tend to look for when offering jobs to prospective employees. When you are looking to get a website for your company, it should be no different and experience should be one of, if not the most important aspect to look for in a potential website designer.

Experience can come in the form of familiarity with your industry or sector. Having worked in your field before, the designer is much more at ease when it comes to knowing the gist of what you expect and they should also be more knowledgeable about their type of questions that ask, so not wasting your time. Past experience in a certain industry also means that they are well versed in the etiquette of the do's and do not which again, will save time in the long run. Also, it means that you will not have to supervise them at each and every step of the project.

It also goes without saying that a designer who is up to date with the technological advances in THEIR field is essential if you want to build a successful website. By this I mean the website should be scalable in terms of search engine optimization, as well as inoculate you against the myriad of minor issues such as compatibility over multiple browsers and operating systems. Additionally, experience in web design means that the designer is less likely to make mistakes, which can be both time consuming and costly to your and your business.

So, when you come to picking a web designer make sure they know the ropes and – if possible – have at least a passing familiarity with your sector and good, in-depth knowledge as well as an extensive skill set in theirs.

You’ve done all of the dirty work: you’ve come up with a great website concept, contacted potential customers, and you’ve even thought of interesting ways to advertise. Now, all that is left to do is hire a competent web designer. Simple, right? Wrong. Failure to find the right web designer could make or break your concept. After years of fixing the mistakes of other web designers, I’ve created a list of things you should avoid when hiring a web designer.

1. Not Understanding What You are Signing up For

One of the biggest, if not the biggest, mistake you can make when choosing a web designer is not fully understanding what you are paying for and how much you are paying. Countless web design companies use the magic words “as low as” or “starting from” when describing their prices. It is up to you to find out exactly how much it is going to cost for your project. Ask questions and never settle for general estimates. Similarly, it is important to know the difference between web design and web development. Web design could simply include the graphical display of the web page–without any coding at all. Make sure you ask your web designer which service he/she is providing.

2. Afraid to Ask for Revisions

When having a website designed, it is important to remember that you have hired someone to do a job. While that may seem simple, many people fail to remember this when it comes to asking for revisions. If you are not happy with the design produced, do not be afraid to tell the designer exactly what you want changed. Ultimately, this web page will be a reflection of you and your business and you want it to convey the right message. Make sure that a designer is open to providing revisions before they are hired.

3. Settling on the First Design

No matter how great the first design looks, never settle! Wait to see the other ideas that the designer has before making a decision. Often times, something as small as changing the page layout can make all the difference with the usability of the website. It is also important to get outside feedback, from either friends or your target market, on the designs you are interested in. While a bright lime-green page might look great to you, your target market could disagree.

4. Hiring Just One Designer

This is critical: do not use a single designer! In my experience, the creativity of design that I received from a team of designers was far superior to that of a single designer. This is simply because a team of designers can give you 10 different perspectives on a design whereas a single designer is limited. Also, one single designer could have dozens of projects to complete in a very short time; leaving little time to focus on your project. The best part is that you don’t have to pay more to have a team of designers. Companies such as Webfor200.com have teams of designers that charge single-designer prices.

5. Paying Too Much

Despite what you may have read before, a website DESIGN does not cost thousands of dollars. Shop around to find the best quotes before settling on a price. With websites, higher prices do not always translate into better work. The web development world is filled with massive egos. Getting multiple quotes is the easiest way to avoid the fluff.

Quick Tip: having the website design and coding completed separately could end up saving you money. Why? The truth is, some web programmers are not graphic designers and some graphic designers are not programmers. Many professionals will be better at one than the other. A designer might charge you more to do both the programming and the design if they are not skilled in both areas. To use this trick, simply find someone to design your site and then find a web developer to code that design separately.

Introduction

When you’re deciding who you’re going to employ to get your website built it can be a difficult decision. How do you know your web designer is going to give you what you want? How much will the website be? Can you rely on them after you’ve paid? What happens if the worst happens? There are many potential dangers we can help you to avoid.

To assist you in your decision making process we’ve come up with the five key things you should look out for before hiring your web developer. After all it’s better to do research in the first instance, rather than spend a lot of wasted money. This concise overview will assist you to understand some of the areas you should talk through with prospective web designers.

1 – Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Essentially, this means asking if your web developer offers you Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as part of their services. It’s important to be clear on what they do offer and what they don’t offer. Many web designers may be very effective at web design but SEO is a specialism in it’s own right. If they do offer SEO find out what the this actually means in reality. Your web developer may well use a lot of terms you might not be familiar with, such as ‘on page optimisation’, ‘off page optimisation’, ‘page rank’, ‘link juice’, ‘link building’, ‘white hat’ and other techniques etc. It’s worth you taking the time to research these terms and understand what’s important to you and your website. I would recommend avoiding anyone who tells you they can get you to the top of Google in a week / 24 hours or some other miracle time period. For example, it can take up to 6 months depending on what search terms you want to appear for in Google, depending on how competitive your search terms are. Avoid short term gain techniques, these will only sabotage your website down the line for short term gain. Another option to consider is that you may choose to have your custom web design built by a specialist web designer. Then have the SEO done by a dedicated Search Engine Optimisation specialist separately. If you decide to go with this option, it’s worth considering a web developer who uses SEO friendly software in the first instance. Ask your web designer if their software is Search Engine Friendly. If yes, ask them specifically how is the software they use SEO friendly?

2 – Communication

Communication is key to the success of your project. We all know this doesn’t just mean knowing you’ve spoken once and they were very keen to know you and get you on board. You should look to do your due diligence. This should give you a good understanding of how well the web developer communicates with their clients. Find out their opening hours. What happens if there’s a problem? Clarify the ways in which you can communicate with your web developer? Such as telephone, email, instant message, mobile, text message, face to face, forums? If you have an ongoing contract how will communication be managed on a daily basis?

3 – CMS versus Brochures

When the internet began, many websites resembled brochures. You visited a site with lots of static, non dynamic pages. Today, with the increasingly sophisticated web technologies that exist, websites such as Facebook and Twitter update dynamically, in real time.

If you know that you wish to update your website yourself you should seriously consider opting for a Content Management System (CMS). The great benefit is that you can run the website yourself. For brochure style website you might have pay for updates as the web developer has to spend time updating the website on your behalf. If you do go for a brochure style website, find out the ongoing management fees. If they do use a CMS system, ask them what training you’ll have to get up to speed on using and administering the system.

4 – Speed kills

Speed does indeed kill. But in this case it’s slow speed that kills. Any website that loads over 6-8 seconds will quickly turn off visitors. How many times have you clicked on a website and when it slowly loaded you’d had enough? You then moved on or returned to Google. Ask your web designer what hosting packages they use? Is it joint hosting system or on it’s own dedicated server? You should be offered a menu of options for hosting based upon your needs. Be wary if not. Follow up with your web developer on how the hosting works? Talk to your web designer about the options for speeding up your website. This can include a Content Delivery Network (CDN), caching programs and minify. Does your web developer offer these type of services? Remember, slow speed kills, a quick loading website has earned the right to be seen and heard.

5 – To be open or closed?

It’s prudent to ask what would happen in the worst case scenario? If your web developer’s company went bust, would your website still function? For those web developers who use their own in house technology, find out what happens if they did go out of business? Would your website still function? For web designers who use open source technologies such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc these are open source so the technology at least should be safe. Ask about your hosting as well. Is the hosting tied to their own company? Often companies will use third party hosting outside their own company.

Summary

Remember, above all, due diligence on your web designer before hiring them. What do independent reviews from previous clients say? How can you communicate with them? Do they offer Search Engine Optimsation (SEO)? What technology do they us? Follow these 5 tips above to get yourself a web developer worthy of your project!