This was written assuming one is needing a professional WordPress Website Developer.
How to Choose a Web Developer
Choosing a WordPress Website Developer can be a little intimidating
There are a million people who claim to be good, (or tinker with it) but have no experience.
It makes sense to be shown examples of work, or references of clients to speak with. After all, it is your business, and you want the best for your money. Other questions one should ask the WordPress Website Developer / graphic designer are the following:
- Code. They should be able to write HTML code manually.
- Languages. Depending on your needs of the site, do they work with languages such as JavaScript, jQuery, ASP, .NET, or PHP, SCSS / SASS.
- Meta-Stuff. Can they create the meta-tags and optimize them for major search engines.
- Interactivity. Do they have the ability to create forms and other interactive content (animations, interactive / intuitive menus, etc..).
- Servers. Have they worked with websites in a secure server environment.
You may not need all of these things for any one website, but any professional web designer will have the skill set and/or capabilities, so these are all good questions to ask as an indicator.
Ask what the programs they use are, to create websites. It is completely true that a web designer can create websites with cheap software, and great software doesn’t mean great websites.
Here are some facts that can help one get a firm feeling of the web designer‘s skill level:
- Page Builders like Visual Composer, Elementary, and Divi. It is a red flag if your professional web designers uses these plugins for web design. 🚩🚩🚩
- Hand Coding. Some professional web designers work mainly with text editors or IDEs. In theory this is good — it means they write code by hand, which shows a thorough understanding of the medium. – BUT plain text editors are NOT the most efficient way of coding.
- Software. IDEs like PHP Storm and other programs like it are excellent and relatively expensive. Although owning an expensive program doesn’t mean the website designer knows it well, it does mean that they have made the financial commitment to having the best tool for the job.
What software the web designer uses, is not such a big deal.— it’s an indicator. (stay away from page builders!)
Find out how the WordPress Website Developer is going to optimize (SEO), your site for search engines. If the web designer doesn’t know, or if the designer says, choosing great meta-tags is what you need to do; they don’t know how to optimize your site for search engines.
Ask the WordPress Website Developer what their process is to construct your website. How do they determine your needs? Will you have consultation time during construction? If so, How often? What happens if you don’t like their design?
Make sure to be clear about who owns the site upon completion. Some WordPress Website Developers retain copyright. In my opinion, you paid for the website, and the website belongs to you once fully paid. Period.
Ask about how much a website costs. DO NOT be mesmerized by a cheap quote — this tends to mean something important is missing. But, if you receive a quote more than a few thousand dollars you should expect a stunning result with remarkable results in search engines — the majority of websites can be made for less than this.
Ask About Hosting
There are probably a million hosting companies out there, some cheap, some not so cheap. Make sure you have the following (since they are pretty much standard:
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unlimited storage
- MySql support (should be unlimited instances of databases)
- Unlimited file transfer (uploading and downloading content to/from your site)
When talking about domains, and hosting, we believe you should own each. We should know own your domain, or the content on it. We can refer you to a great hosting solution with an excellent price, with world class service, and 99.9% uptime. (your site isn’t down)
Make sure to ask for example sites the WordPress Website Developer has produced. Chances are, if they all look the same, yours will look just like the examples. If all of the sites are different, then you are in for some excitement, since you are choosing a creative web designer.
Search Engine Optimization
Although it is not imperative that a web designer is an SEO Specialist, but they should know the things that go into it, and create designs that are conducive to great SEO. Website Developers should also know about SEO tactics and strategies, so they can leave areas for code that will be needed to be added to the website for tracking SEO Performance. A great WordPress Developer will develop a site that is an excellent platform for an SEO Specialist to work from. The sites that MindChip Industries develop, score very high in Google Pagespeed. Site delivery speed is the #2 thing that Google is looking at, (first being relevant content), to rank your site. WordPress Websites that I develop already have the boulder of speed pushed 3/4 up the hill, ready for an SEO Specialist and easier for them to push the boulder up the rest of the hill and over!
We hope this helps you in your decision-making for a Michigan WordPress Website designer / Detroit WordPress Website Developer.
MindChip Industries is a Michigan WordPress website designer services firm specializing in Michigan WordPress Website Development, Detroit Graphic Design, and online marketing.
MindChip Industries, a leader in affordable Michigan WordPress Website Designer, and best in Detroit Web Design, is a website designer services firm, located in Wayne County, Michigan.