How To Evaluate A Web Designer
Written by Darin on May 29, 2008 at 11:17 am
So you need to have a website built, but you’re having a hard time choosing a designer? Common problem. While I can’t give you the answer (unless you want to hire me, of course!), I can give you some ‘insider tips’ to help you choose who to work with.
Evaluate The Designer’s Portfolio
This seems like an obvious one, but I’m suggesting that you look beyond the impressive image and actually evaluate the site. A good web designer will balance nice looks with the most important piece: communicating the information. Unfortunately there are some designers who design really “cool” looking websites with plenty of graphical fanciness, but the sites are frustrating to use. Look at your experience using the designer’s website: was it easy to find the information you wanted? Can you get to any area of the site with just a few clicks? Is the menu easy to find and easy to understand? Good web design is finding a pleasing presentation on top of a usable, easily understood, smoothly functioning website.
How Flexible Is The Designer?
Some designers have a distinctive style, and some seem to have no continuity at all. Each has its benefits, but you need to understand what you want from the design. Some people want a design that fits with a distinctive style, but others want a site that is specifically tailored to their needs, branding and design ideas. Looking at a portfolio as a whole will give you a feeling for his/her flexibility, as you’ll quickly see similarities or the variety in the designs. Also, look at the designer’s personal site in comparison with the client sites. If they’re very similar, this designer probably has a distinctive style. If there’s quite a difference, the personal site is what the designer prefers and the portfolio is full of sites tailored to the individual clients. Again, neither is inherently bad, it just depends on what you want.
Look Under The Hood
I know this is the most intimidating point I’m going to make. Most people are coming to a web designer because looking at the underlying code is migraine-inducing. So I’m just going to give you a couple of basic tips, then you can close that window and never think about code again (unless you want to, come on in, the water’s warm!). In Internet Explorer click View -> Source. Just glance over the code, if you see <table> in there (and there’s not a table of information on the page) RUN AWAY. Also, just see if you can find the menu text, or the main content. You should be able to find it relatively quick, if not: that’s a problem. If you see the words “Front Page” or “iWeb” or some version of “content generator” in the first part of the source, close the browser and walk away. Lastly, if you want a great test, follow the instructions in this article to see the site as a screen reader (used by people with visual impairment, also, the way Google indexes the site…very important) does.
Hopefully these tips help you choose a designer to work with. I know it’s easy for me, as a designer, to evaluate the quality of websites, and I thought I’d pass on some basic tips to you, the end consumer. I should say, thankfully there are a number of very good designers who generate excellent code, so most reputable designers will pass these tests. But every once in a while I’m surprised that people keep hiring designers who build 2nd rate sites (and the end user usually ends up paying far more than the site is worth). Good luck choosing!