Choosing a Website Designer or Developer
Website have a wide range in cost, ability, and design.
- Where do you start?
- How much does it cost?
- What to do you want?
- Can you trust your webmaster?
It can be a challenge to sort out relevant information and technology terms. What makes things worse, there is no general recipe. Talk to 10 website developers and you get 10 opinions (and prices) on how to design your website. Variety is a good thing, but how do you decide when you don’t understand the technology and the process? Here’s our Hawaii web design company’s opinion.
Do your homework first.
Think about what you want. What is most important for your website? Who is your audience? Do you need to update the website yourself? How often? Look at some websites in your industry and make a list of what you like and dislike.
Tools of the trade.
Websites can be build in different ways with different tools and programming. The common framework is HTML markup language. Every web page you view is based upon this standard.
Most professional designed websites utilize additional programming languages for dynamic content and interactivity. (PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, Perl, Flash, JavaScript…). There is no good or bad of one or the other. Web designers and developers use what the like and are good at. This is always a personal decision. Ask your developer what he is using and why.
Look behind the design
The source code shows you how web designers work.
Did you ever get curious and view the source of a web page? (go to view > Source Code in your browser) You will see the markup language which tells your browser how and what to display on that page.
Why should I look at this source code? You can learn about a designer or developer. Good designers and developers create efficient web pages with little overhead and conform to new web standards. This shows in the page code.
If you can’t find your content in the jumbled mess, something is amiss. Does it look messy with a lot of tags?
Tags like
"<table>, <td>, <tr>"
the page is build using the old standard (HTML 4.0).
If you see tags like
<div class="mint">
instead, that means your developer is on the ball! The web page was built with the new standard XHTML. You will also notice that the overall code looks much more organized and is almost readable.
The page source will tell you if a web designer is detail oriented and is up to date with new web standards and technology.
Tech Support
Can you get hold of them on the phone? Or do you end up in an endless loop, or worse, trying to find an email address to send your problem. Make sure you get reasonable tech support (they are not there to educate you how to use the web, but rather, how to address problems specific to your site).
The bottom line.
The cheapest quote for a website project isn’t always the best choice. The most expensive one isn’t either. Educate yourself and ask questions. Look at the designers portfolio and find someone you feel comfortable with.
A good overview of web design is posted at wikipedia