How To Choose a Website Designer

I actually wanted to post this earlier but due to the workload just after the Chinese New Year, I’ve been updating the blog slower. As you know, profit or revenue generated from this blog is used to maintain this space and its goal driven purpose to all Malaysians and anyone else who’d like to learn more about the website industry in Malaysia.

This post will be using a few things said by Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey because he touched really a lot of solid points in his podcast of finding a website designer in conjunction with his facelift of his blog. I’ll add some at the end of the post which I might see viable here.

First you search your own network, ask around..

See how effective referral marketing could work if you implemented it. Not to mention passing out your business cards like confetti as well is part of referral marketing.

If you’re not familiar with IT, it’s important to make a distinction between the designer and a programmer when it comes to websites. You’ll find that the person who’s good at making a pretty website isn’t necessary good at programming the website.

In essence, the designer is more of the painter or the architect of a house whilst the builder or constructor is more of the programmer..

I simply loved this metaphor and I too recently used the building of a house metaphor to explain to the client the building process of mockup, prototype and live website.

So being a small business owner, I think we tend to approach other small business owners because it’s a natural dialog and it’s usually a bit more affordable than going with a large website development firm.

This is a very solid point and a clear explaination of how to choose the right-priced Malaysia website designer for your project. If you’re a starting company with only 2 people and don’t have an average budget for a website, you could opt for students still studying – those who haven’t been freelancing more than 6 months. However, if your business is run online than obviously most of the investment should be placed in the website development.

My recommendation is find someone in your social network who can refer you to someone who’ve they used and they’ve proven that they can demonstrate their value.

This is giving the people choosing a website designer a big advantage because you’re getting direct feedback from a friend who became a client of that particular website designer. So if your friend was happy and satisfied with the service provided, you could bet that it’s the safest choice for you at the moment.

When it comes to building a website, the designer is there to design and implement a layout and not there to produce content for you. One of the biggest hiccups and roadblocks from a designer’s point of view is waiting for you to produce content to fill the website. And contents an important part because it often impacts the way things are laid out. Now if you look at Entrepreneurs-Journey with the new design, I had to have content in certain spaces to see how the overall picture was presented.

This is something most clients don’t prepare for designers before they begin any work especially on a mockup. Because of this, I normally fill up spaces of content with dummy text that I get from Lipsum.

So the important points touched on here:

• search within your networks
• search online networks
• post up the job at forums/job websites
• select designer according to size of project
• prepare content in already digital format

Actually, there’s nothing to add because Yaro had already given advice of the safest advice when you need to find a reliable yet professional help according to your project.

However, if you really need more advice then always ask if the designer has a contract that needs to be signed or request them to state clearly the Terms & Conditions that might be involved in a project.