Seven things to know before hiring a web designer
So you’ve decided to hire a web designer to design your website. Excellent news girl!
But, before you set out to hire a web designer, there are a few things you need to know if you want your project to go smooth as butter.
1. The purpose of your website
The first thing you need to know is what do you hope to achieve with your website. Is it:
to get more email subscribers
to increase the sales
to build awareness about your brand
all of the above?
Knowing this helps your designer come up with a visual design, layout, and website flow that will help you achieve your website’s purpose.
2. The features you need
There are certain features that every website needs to have. This includes the ability to have people get in touch with you, the ability for people to understand what you offer, and the ability for people to sign up for your list or book call.
Aside from those, there are also specific features that you might need depending on your business. For example, if you want to sell physical or digital products, you need to be able to accept payments.
Or you might sell online classes and courses, in which case you need people to be able to purchase those courses and access the course material. You can either have that custom built for you or you can look into ways of connecting an existing course platform like Thinkific, Teachable, or NewKajabi with your website so that people can easily access your courses.
Or perhaps you need your website to serve as a company wiki in which case you need a way to store information and allow others to access that information and contribute to it.
In other words, knowing what you want your website to do will help your designer or developer not only design and implement all the features but also decide which platform is best suited for your website.
3. Who the ideal client is
Your ideal client is the basis of everything and you need to know what motivates them, what inspires them, what scares them. You need to go beyond the basic demographics like
“She has brown hair, she’s married, lives in the suburbs and has two kids…”
Those things, while important, are not as important as knowing their innermost desires and fears and motivators. That’s why you need things like she shops at Nordstrom or she shops at Walmart because this tells you whether she’s a bargain shopper or if she likes more high-end things.
You also need to know how she makes her purchase decision -- is she an impulse buyer or is she looking for more quality stuff and a good return on investment?
Having a deep understanding of your ideal client like this will help you write copy your website that will basically make them feel like you really get them and understand them. That’s how you turn those random Internet strangers and visitors into subscribers and then into clients and buyers.
How to Get Familiar With Your Ideal Client?
If you want to be really really familiar with your ideal client, I recommend you give them a name and find a stock photo of a person that you can see working yourself with. Print that bad boy out and have it somewhere handy.
Keep it nearby so that whenever you need to make a decision on what to do in your business or how to write an email, how to write a post for social media or a blog post or record a podcast episode or a video, look at them and pretend that you’re talking to them.
You’ll be surprised at how creating content suddenly becomes a hell of a lot easier than just staring at a blank screen or a blank piece of paper and trying to come up with something smart and witty and compelling.
Another way to approach this is basically writing a story about your ideal client. I like to call this the Typical Monday exercise. Here’s a fun fact, everyone’s Monday is special and you need to know how your client’s everyday life looks like if you want to write strong, compelling copy. This story will help you get so familiar with your client that you’ll feel like you’re talking to your bestie.
4. What pages you want on your website
Knowing what pages you want on your website ahead of time will help your designer understand what they need to create and how to design a visitors flow that will guide your website visitors to take action on your site.
The most common pages include Home, About, Services, Blog, and Contact. You might also need a separate page for each service or course you sell, an optin page, a thank you page, a shop page, and more. This largely depends on your business and what you want your website visitors to do as well as what you want your website to achieve.
5. Timeframe
You also need to know how soon would you like your website to be completed. This will also help you find a designer who is available to work on your project and one that can complete your website in that timeframe. After all, nobody needs to wait for ages to launch their new website.
6. Budget considerations
You need to know your budget. How much are you willing to invest and spend on your website. This can help guide your decision when it comes to hiring a designer that fits your budget, whether that’s a high-end designer or a designer that offers payment plans.
It also dictates whether you’ll have it completely done from scratch or if you want to use a platform with a pre-made theme or if you want to go to DIY route.
7. Content and images
Finally, you need to know what text and images will go on your website. Having your content all ready to go before you start a web design project will make it easier for your designer to create an effective website, not to mention it will be easier for you to give feedback on the design. There is just something about seeing the real thing instead of trying to imagine what your text would look like instead of fake copy.
So there you have it girlfriend, those are the must-know things before you hire a web designer.
Already have everything in place and want to get the ball rolling? Well then, what are you waiting for? Get in touch and let’s get you a website that converts as good as it looks.
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