So you are ready to take the jump and hire a web designer. But, where do you begin? There are many questions going through your head right now and we hope to help you so that you can spend more time running your business.. Before you choose a web designer from Radcliff, Elizabethtown, or Vine Grove in Kentucky, or even Paris, Texas to create a website that fits your vision, there are many things that you may want to keep in mind. There are great web designers, terrible web designers, and everything in between. We wrote this article to help you out with finding the web designer that will best represent your values as a business owner and to demystify much of what many web designers might hide in technical jargon. It is very easy to get a website built in today’s technical world and new code is being written all the time to assist in this. So what is better? Do you do it yourself or do you hire someone? We are going to assume for the purpose of this article that you just do not have the time to invest in building your own site no matter what tools you may use. Here are some questions that you will need to ask any web designer that you are thinking about working with, to help you narrow the search in finding someone to design a website that suits the needs of your company.
Are they willing to research your business?

What websites have they created? Do you like their style?

Does the webmaster outsource any work?

Will they keep a record of all of your discussions?

What do they know about marketing online?

For instance: A search for “Pizza Elizabethtown Kentucky” into Google will give results for pizza places. If you are the owner of a pizza place in a location you want to try to be the highest result for this search phrase. What can hurt this from a design standpoint? Bad code and loading speed are your enemy in this example. So a good web designer will design a site with speed in mind following good code practices.
How much will the site cost? Are there any other fees to pay, like a deposit?

Now, a bit of a story for you if you would indulge me for a moment.
In 2004 David and I were major sellers on eBay. We had product filling almost every part of our house and garage. We were shipping over a hundred packages a day. We built a rather successful business online. The market we were in (selling vintage items we bought at auctions) became saturated as everyone got into the game. Our a hundred a day shipping habit dropped to four a day on average. We had the bug however and wanted to keep making money online. So we decided to put all of the rest of our product into our own online store. Where did we start though? We first decided to have a website built. We knew nothing about it and we were charged over four thousand dollars for a website with an interface that was very hard to update with products and payments. Today, we know that the site we had built, David could have done in about five hours. This is what started us on the path back to college and restructuring our business as we learned. As David learned web design and became obsessed with it he found out how much many web designers really are overcharging for work. At our weekly business meeting he outlined what he wanted to do for small businesses in Paris, Texas and Radcliff, Kentucky, and even Columbus, OH. The rest they say is history.
What is the moral of this story? Do not let your lack of knowledge about web design make you pay thousands of dollars your small business cannot afford. At the same time, do not be afraid of it.
When will you be billed?

Do they have real testimonials?

Will they maintain or host the site once it is finished?

Do you own your website and the domain?

Do you like the web designer and think they will behave in an ethical manner?

What is the website deadline? Can they meet it?

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