Hi! Today I would like to touch upon a topic that will be very relevant for people who want to order a website development for themselves. Now on the market are thousands of different proposals for development, but how to understand what will suit you? How to choose the performer and how to achieve that your site was not just beautiful, but also brought income.
Let's start from afar. First you need to understand for what purpose you need a site. Types of sites there is a huge number, ranging from simple business card sites and ending with huge services like Amazon. At this stage, decide what task the site should solve. For example, you have your own cleaning company and you promote your services through social networks. At some point you decide that it would not be bad to launch your site, make advertising and get more orders. Already at this stage you can roughly imagine what tasks the site should solve. In this case, it is most likely a one-page site, which will provide general information about services, prices, stages of work and contact form. Most likely you do not need to think through a multi-page site, where there will be several pages with a description, a personal account and a form for accepting payments.
So, the first step is to determine what tasks your site has.
Then you should understand who your client. In other words, for whom this site will be. For example, you want to sell their services for individuals or for large companies, or perhaps you are interested in both directions. Then it is worth a more detailed description of your client. Who he is: gender, age, type of activity. At first glance it may seem complicated and unnecessary, but in fact understanding who your client is one of the key knowledge not only for the development of the site, and in general for business development.
Understanding who your client will help the developer to take into account specific elements in the design that will appeal to a particular group.
The next step is to understand what amount you are willing to invest in development. If you just open Google or any freelance exchange, the price range will be huge. Starting from 10-20 dollars for the entire project and ending with amounts in the tens, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. In this case, as in any other case you need to understand that for the minimum budget most likely you will not be able to achieve a result that will be useful. If you offer to do the work for 10-30 dollars, it is likely to be a very poor quality project, in the development of which the performer has not invested any effort and knowledge. If you have too small a budget, say up to 100 dollars, in this case I would recommend considering the options of sites created on the constructor. You can assemble such a site yourself for a couple of evenings. A good option would be, for example6 Wix. It will not give you a wide choice of design and location of blocks, but will allow you to create a standard page that can be put to work immediately. Also, this option is suitable if you need to test any product or service and you are not ready to part with a significant amount of money. Hiring a freelancer for a budget of less than 100 dollars will be a bad idea, most likely the quality will disappoint you.
If your budget is 200-500 dollars, then you can already start to consider options to attract a specialist. Although here it is worth realizing that for such a budget you will not get a unique project, most likely it will be minimally creative design project, created on the site builder.
With a budget of 500 to 1000-1500 the choice of freelancers becomes much greater. In this budget you can find a specialist with good experience, who will be able to work out the design of the site in more detail and individually.
If your budget is much higher than 1000 dollars, then you can turn to a design studio. Here you will get a much deeper service, which will include not only design and code writing, but also detailed market research, audience, tests and hypotheses. But it is worth understanding that the development of a complex project in the studio can take several months, so you need to be ready for it. However, the result of such work will be on a completely different level, as a whole team will be working on your project.
Next, we start searching for a suitable contractor. Let's assume that you have 1000 dollars for the development of the project. This amount is enough to find a good specialist who will devote enough time to do the job well.
When choosing a designer, pay attention to the list of services that he offers. If a person promises you to design, write code, create a logo, corporate identity, customize animations, run ads and still edit a couple of videos, it is worth thinking about. One person probably can't have the skills in so many services. He might actually do it, but the quality might not be top notch. My advice is to work with people who focus on one or two services. The fact is that a designer has to constantly develop their skills and abilities, and that's pretty hard to do in so many services at a decent level. I, for example, offer my clients anything related to UX/ UI design and development. I don't make logos, I don't edit videos for a website, and I don't work in detail with animations. I believe that a specialist should focus on a narrow area and strive to provide quality services in his/her field.
The next thing to pay attention to is how the designer works. If at the first contact he just sent you a form in which he asked you to describe what you want to get - this is not the best option. The designer should talk to you, do a short interview, ask the right questions and immerse themselves in your business as much as possible. In my next post, I'll write more about the stages of design, on how I conduct my projects, what I ask my customers and how I convey information. Communication should be at all stages of development. For example, the designer made the main page, sent you the project. A good designer will be sure to explain why he did this or that action and how it will affect further user experience.
The short conclusion of these stages is that the designer must communicate with the client.
But the same applies to you. Try to be as clear as possible about what you want to end up with. Do not be afraid to appear as a person who does not understand, you do not have to understand and understand everything. If you want to know something, just ask. You are always happy to explain everything.
Next, talk about all the organizational aspects. Discuss deadlines, stages of acceptance of work (for example, the designer must approve each block of the page individually or on the contrary, send only a fully completed project)
If you have materials (texts, pictures, videos, etc.) feel free to send it to the designer. Working with ready content is always easier and faster. In addition, your customers will see real photos, texts and videos of your business, which will help build trust in you. And stock images have not attracted customers for a long time.
Summarizing, I would like to say that the launch of the site is not difficult, but still responsible task, which should be approached consciously. It is necessary to understand what tasks the site will solve and what will be the evaluation of performance (eg, receiving new applications, collecting contact information, etc.).
Do not seek to save money on everything. Remember that unfortunately, for little money the result will be mediocre. If the budget is small, then you will be helped by website builders.
And most importantly, communicate with the designer, ask questions and be ready to share information about your project. The more information the designer has, the easier and faster he will be able to create a product that will bring you maximum benefit.
Good luck in your search for designers and see you in the next articles.
