What do you look for in a website designer?
11-20-2008, 04:12 PM
Cardy,
In reply to your original question. I think that you need to have a clear target customer base. You need to think about who may be interested in purchasing your service, for example, I'm guessing perhaps small businesses and other 'one-man-bands. What do they want a web presence for? Do they want to do actual business over the web, do they want to essentially provide a web-based catalogue of their services or do they just want people to be able to find them via search engines and then phone them up? Do they actually know what they want a website for or have they been convinced its just something a modern business ought to have? Do they want to pay you to keep the website up-to-date or do they want to be able to update the content of the site themselves?
You also need to think about your competitors in the web-design market, even if you genuinely believe that you can just start out and do just what they do except better then few customers will trust you do to that. Try instead to find a gap in the market, provide services that others don't or target customers that others don't. Just as an example from pure guess work (I am be very wrong and the market already well filled or near non-existent) perhaps there are local small businessmen out there who don't really understand the internet but have sort of decided they ought to have a website, probably on the simpler end of the scale, but need advice as to their website could and should contain, they might well prefer face-to-face meetings rather than telephone calls and emails. That example might well be far off the mark, however my point is its often more profitable to do what others don't than to provide the exact same services as everybody else.
I know this is an obvious point but your own website be a public example of what you could do for prospective customers, it needs to be carefully thought out, attractive to the eye, etc. You don't want would-be customers to think, "I don't want a website that looks like that!"
In reply to your original question. I think that you need to have a clear target customer base. You need to think about who may be interested in purchasing your service, for example, I'm guessing perhaps small businesses and other 'one-man-bands. What do they want a web presence for? Do they want to do actual business over the web, do they want to essentially provide a web-based catalogue of their services or do they just want people to be able to find them via search engines and then phone them up? Do they actually know what they want a website for or have they been convinced its just something a modern business ought to have? Do they want to pay you to keep the website up-to-date or do they want to be able to update the content of the site themselves?
You also need to think about your competitors in the web-design market, even if you genuinely believe that you can just start out and do just what they do except better then few customers will trust you do to that. Try instead to find a gap in the market, provide services that others don't or target customers that others don't. Just as an example from pure guess work (I am be very wrong and the market already well filled or near non-existent) perhaps there are local small businessmen out there who don't really understand the internet but have sort of decided they ought to have a website, probably on the simpler end of the scale, but need advice as to their website could and should contain, they might well prefer face-to-face meetings rather than telephone calls and emails. That example might well be far off the mark, however my point is its often more profitable to do what others don't than to provide the exact same services as everybody else.
I know this is an obvious point but your own website be a public example of what you could do for prospective customers, it needs to be carefully thought out, attractive to the eye, etc. You don't want would-be customers to think, "I don't want a website that looks like that!"
Fred
Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
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