If you are looking for special programming talents or you just want an original and fresh idea, you can hire a web page designer. I recommend posting your design request online at http://elance.com or looking for web page designers on http://ebay.com. Believe it or not you can easily find a cheap web page designer on Ebay just contact those people who are selling web sites and templates for low prices and ask them if they take personal projects.

At elance.com and scriptlance.com You would post your project description and wait for people to bid on it. You are not obligated to accept any bids until you are satisfied with the price, the designer and the turn around time. Be very specific in your screening process. The websites mentioned above are a great way to find an affordable web designer that will custom design your web site for you and your designer does not need to be in your home town you can transfer files over the internet and speak on the phone. These two places are also great for finding a programmer to do something you cannot do like add a database or create interactive elements using PHP or ASP.

But before you jump right in there and look for a designer there are some very important things that you need to ask a potential designer and know about your own design needs before you jump in.

Choosing a Professional Web Designer;

Assuming you have already made up your mind and you have decided to go with a cheap web designer you'll want to make sure they have a good understanding of the internet from a business point of view. They should know some of the basic points that I have outlined in the design tips article and the design don'ts article, they do not have to be specialists but they should have a good understanding of how to build a site to perform well in the search engines and how to make sure it looks good on different browsers.

Designing a web site effectively requires an understanding and experience in many areas of the internet including but not limited to; marketing online, optimizing web graphics, cross browser designing and optimizing web pages for search engines.

Your designer needs to understand you, your business and what you want your web site to accomplish. Check out the competition in your field, visit their web sites to get ideas of how you want to design yours. In a moment we are going to go over what your designer needs to know from you but first, Here are a few questions you need to have answered to in order to pre-qualify a designer to work on your project.

 

• What are the designer's strengths and weaknesses? The range of skills required for creating any type of web site is more diverse than you can imagine. If you know what your site needs you can make sure to find out in advance if your designer is strong in that area. Web designers usually have web designing friends so if they cannot do something they most likely know someone who can fill in where they fall short.
  
  
• Is the designer easy to work with and talk to? Make sure your designer is open to your suggestions and your ideas, he/she should provide some input and suggest things that need more consideration or improvement, but listening is a virtue that can't be underrated. Is she/he able to communicate technical information so that you can understand it? The designers that will be bidding on your sites from elance and scriptlance may not be American. Make sure the language barrier is not going to be a problem in getting your concepts across, if they are developing any content for you, you might want to make sure they are strong in english.
  
  
• What does the designers portfolio look like? Look at some of their previous client's sites. Do the graphics load quickly? Can you find your way around the web site easily? Email the web site owner and ask them if they are happy with the design and the designer? Most importantly do all of the web sites look the same?
  

• Is the designer experienced in web site design? Ask them a few questions. Are they primarily a graphic designer who does web design too or are they a programmer that dabbles in HTML? Have they designed business web sites before? Have they ever designed a web site entirely themselves from scratch? Do they write the code or do they use a WYSIWYG editor. It might not matter which they do but if something goes wrong and your designer cannot edit raw html at all you might have a problem. How long has the designer been creating web sites? What is their background?
  
  
• How long has your designer been using the internet if at all? To what degree do they use the internet? Do they use it primarily for business or for entertainment? This information will reflect in how they design your web site for the internet. The internet is only 12 years old so someone who has been using the internet regularly for 2-3 years can be considered very experienced. 5-6 years is a seasoned veteran. Ideally, your site designer should have a variety of experience but internet experience is very important since your web site will ultimately need to be placed there.

 

Questions you should have answered before you contact a designer about your web design project;

Web designers are not always web site planners as well, if you are looking for cheap web designers they most likely will not help you plan your web site. The less you pay the less prep work the designer is going to be willing to do. When I designed web sites I learned quickly to come up with a questionnaire for my clients, I wasted a lot of time going to meet clients who had no idea what they wanted or needed on their web site. They just wanted a web site and was supposed to pull one out of thin air for them. I chased them for months to complete a web site before I finally learned my lesson.

 

Define your web site's goals;

• Why do you want one? What is the message you want to convey or what is the primary reason you are setting up a web site? How will a website help your business? What is the desired outcome of your site? What do you want it to change for you in your business? What are your expectations for the web site one year down the road?
  
  
• Who is your customer? Will your offline customer shop on your web site? Are you planning to capture a global market? If your web site business is 100% online you need to know the primary age group of your ideal customer, what do they do for a living, where would they congregate online? Is your customer local or global?
  
  
• What is unique about your product or service? With this information you can focus on that one feature and explain the benefit of it to your customer. What are the topics that you want your site to focus on? Will you provide information or will your site just be a catalog? Do you want to create a web site that just lures customers in and produces a sale? Do you want them to get the info from your site then call in for the sale?

 

Define your level of Internet expertise;

• Do you have a basic understanding of the internet? How much time have you spent surfing the web looking at web sites from a business point of view? Do you know how businesses get traffic? Have you ever studied marketing online? Do you go online everyday or not often at all? Do you have high speed access or dial up? Who is your ISP (Internet Service provider)?
  
  
• Do you already have a business web site? Have you ever created a personal home page? How many others will be contributing to the site design or site updates? Do you need a crash course in marketing and the internet?

 

Planning your web site design

• Choose a domain name. Would you prefer (.com, .org, .net, or .biz)? Choose 1, 2 or more keywords that describe your business and make sure they are in your domain name.
  
  
• Are you going to need just the design on a disk or will you require full service including FTP upload? Do you need templates that yourself or others in your business will also be able to add content to?
  
  
• Are most of your web site materials in electronic format or in print? Do you have enough ready information for each topic that you want on your web site? Do you have any marketing materials or publications that you want to assimilate online? Are there existing logos or graphics that you want your web site to remain consistent with? Do you need additonal graphics for you web site or will you require graphic design work as well? Are you selling a digital product that you need a mock up cover for? (ie software box cover, ebook cover, newsletter or CD cover?) A mock up cover will make the item seem more tangible and will increase sales and the impression of professionalism.
  
  
• Will you need advanced features and design like database programming, interactive forms, animated tutorials, movies or clips?
  
  
• Do you need your site to be e-commerce enabled? Are you planning to sell anything directly from your web site? If yes what type of product is it? Is it a digital product (that can be delivered online immediately following the sale) or will the product need to be delivered through the mail? Will you need to demonstrate your service? Do you want any add on features like a forum, chat room or live help?
  
  
• Are you designing a new web site or are you making over an old design? If you are re-doing an old web site are you changing anything?
  Why are you making changes? What are you most dissappointed with on the old design? Do you have any ideas of what you want this web site to look like? Have you saved any sample URLS for the designer to use as references?
  
  
• Do you need a logo or header created for your web site? Will you have a one page sales letter, a mini site or a full web site with at least 4 pages?

After the design is complete;

• Who is going to update the site? Will you require the designer to update your site for you? Who is going to check the web site email? How often will the web site be updated? How often will email be checked and answered?

As you can see a lot needs to be considered when you are looking to have a designer work for you. It is important that you know the answers to as many of these questions as possible before you run off and spend your money. It will ensure that both you and the designer have a pleasant experience!

Web Design Resources and Recommendations