When you’re starting out in business, or even an established business, a professional digital presence is crucial. But once you have decided to launch or revamp a website, how do you choose a web designer? Well a great place to start is to ask whether your web designer can build you a WordPress website.
Choosing the right WordPress developer or web design company for building your WordPress site can be an important decision to make for a startup or an established business. In this blog post we will discuss some of the key factors to consider when choosing an honest, capable and fair WordPress developer based on our experience.
1. Look for a Real Person
Find and deal with a real person. Instead of handing your project to an unknown freelancer without knowing who will work on your project, make sure you get to know your designer by either having a phone call, skype chat or an email introduction with him. It is a good practice to meet face-to-face if possible but given the current trend in remote work, this may not be feasible or possible as a lot of experienced WordPress developers prefer to work remotely….even WordPress as a $1billion company does not have a physical office and all of its employees are distributed.
2. Get Valid Contact Details
Be sure to get a valid email address and phone number of a WordPress designer and developer you want to hire. It is important to be able to reach the person in case you need him urgently.
3. Ask for References
An experienced and professional WordPress developer can easily provide real customer testimonials and references. Both Facebook and Google are the best sources for reviews since it is very difficult to forge the reviews on those sites which is something that a lot of companies are doing unfortunately.
4. Good communication
Before hiring an Expert WordPress developer, make sure they will provide you good communication. Since most of the WordPress developers deal with a different project they come out of contract and does not respond when you need them. So, ensure they provide you good communication at least for some hours a day.
5. Check the Portfolio
A good WordPress developer should be able to provide real examples of work that has been successfully completed. Without a portfolio, you are at risk of hiring an inexperienced freelancer who just started working in the web development niche.
6. Check out their website
Look at their website, and I mean really look at it! See how it displays on mobile devices. It might look super pretty, but does it function? Do the links to the company’s social channels work? Indeed, are there any links to their social channels? If you can’t find your way around a website that belongs to a web designer, alarm bells should ring.
7. Look for Experience
Look for someone who has experience servicing clients like you. There could be industry or business size constraints that you want to put on a WordPress developer.
Think about those things that are important to your business. Then hire a developer who can act on them.
8. Good understanding of business model
WordPress developer starts project understanding business model of a client. This helps them to understand the requirement of the client clearly and perform the task accordingly.
9. Proper knowledge on SEO service
SEO is an approach for improving the rank of a website in the page of search engine. These days, WordPress developers do not only have proper knowledge in the programming field but also perform optimisation services within their packages. You don’t want to end up on a website that has too many SEO errors which take an additional cost for you to amend it. Also, it’s the duty of the developer to make sure your website is quick at loading.
- Research them
Any web designer worth their salt should be easily found when you Google their name. If they’re not then something is wrong. Similarly, Google some of their past clients, and see whether they have designed and built websites that register with the search engines. Check your web designer out on social. I’m not a fan of the numbers game and 10 billion followers won’t necessarily impress me, but if a web designer has no social presence then I’d question their digital strategy.
11. Look for Different Skillset & Experience Besides WordPress
There are lots of vital things your web designer should understand about WordPress and online presence as a whole. Ideally, the person should have all the important skills centered around designing for the web and editing images with Fireworks and Photoshop, website hosting expertise, UX/UI knowledge as well as conversion rate optimization experience.
12. Ask Questions
Once you’ve got the research finished, it’s time to ask some questions. Business owners should expect to interview multiple freelancers and agencies to determine who they want to work with.
During the interview process, you need to ask about:
- A current portfolio of work
- What value-added services are offered
- How the developer stays up to date on current trends
- When was the last time they serviced a client of your size/industry
There are other questions that will emerge as you do your research, so prioritize what’s important to you.
13. Speak with the previous client
Many businesses do not achieve the project that meets their business goal. This may be due to the negligence of a WordPress developer involved in the project. So, in order to know about them and the work performed by them clearly, you can speak to their previous client. This helps you to understand their previous performances.
14. The cheapest option is not the best option.
Yes, there are low cost options out there. You can even design and build your own website. But your website is your shop window to the world, so you need it to reflect your business and professionalism. If a web designer is offering you a custom built, fully mobile responsive, search engine optimised website for R 3,000, it might sound to good to be true… That’s probably because it is. Remember, like everything in life you get what you pay for.
15. Quick Response Time
When it comes to hiring a reliable WordPress developer, make sure you get a timely response to your emails. A lot of web designers are engaged in multiple projects with many clients at the same time, so they cannot always provide a quick response to address your requests in a timely manner. Make sure it takes no longer than 24 hours to respond to your question, request. If you observe a delayed response during the initial conversation, chances are that the response will take even longer when you start working together.
16. Regular Tasks or Project Updates
There is nothing more annoying than not knowing the status of your project at a given time. Is your task complete? When will your job be done? Your WordPress designer must keep you in the loop on a daily or weekly basis according to the scope and size of your project.
17. Security is a Major Concern
Your payment details, business information, general security details, and website credentials must be kept securely by the person whom you plan to hire.
18. Core, Theme and Plugin Expertise
When it comes to hiring a WordPress designer, it is important for him to have a very good understanding of all the core aspects of the WordPress platform. The developer should be familiar with the general WordPress plugin ecosystem, WordPress security, WordPress core upgrades, and custom theme development. They should also have hands-on expertise in designing and modifying the WordPress core framework if need be.
19. Monthly Maintenance
Keep in mind that good WordPress designers and development companies should provide ongoing service plans and updates if you want to update the content of your site or add new functionality or features. Beware of companies which are only interested in building your website and then not providing an ongoing support.
At Big Web media we review, develop and design websites so that they do what they are supposed to. Convert visitors into clients and customers. If you’d like to talk to us about web design, give us a call.
