The following guest post was written by Sarah Scrafford of Web Design Schools:

We’ve all come across our share of the DIY people – the ones who are jacks of all trades and masters of none. This may be good enough for your pet projects or hobbies, but when it comes to your profession, professionalism pays. So if you own a web-based business or if your website plays a major role in contributing to your income, it’s best if you hire the best in the business. And this is why you need to ensure that the designer of your choice has nothing to do with these five fictional designers:

• The Search Engine Submission Guy: Sure, you want your pages to be picked up by all the search engines, especially Google; but beware of the designer who tells you he’ll pull all the strings he can to submit your site to as many search engines as he can. For one, that’s not the way your site needs to be optimized to be search-engine friendly; and for another, you’re highly likely to get labeled as spam.
• The Friendly Neighborhood Designer Guy: He’s a hit with the whole family, because he designs all their personal sites and doesn’t charge a dime for the same. But if you want the hits on your pages, steer clear of this one. A family designer should stick to his roots and design just those sites that will gain approval of adoring kith and kin. Aspiring to step out and experiment with your site may be on his agenda, but must definitely not find a place in yours.
• The Guy who Makes a Splash: With his Flash animations and Splash pages, not on the Internet, because of his innovative and creative designs. Besides making your page load inordinately slow, these kind of guys accord more importance to style over substance, a characteristic you certainly don’t need.
• The Accessories up the Sleeve Guy: No, you don’t want those “neat” stat counters or those “cool” gif animations “jazzing” (read cluttering) up your site, and if your prospective designer waxes eloquent about the wonderful accessories he can add to your pages, it’s best to shake hands and go on your way.
• The I Did It Guy: If part of the contract includes appending the name of your designer to the corner of your web page, well, you’re not getting yourself a Picasso or Whistler, so you can kiss this deal goodbye. Your designer must focus on giving his best to your site, not on how and where his name will appear and the publicity it can generate. It’s best to let his work talk for itself.

This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of web design schools. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com

On October 30th, 2008 by Dan Price. Filed under Web design.
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