Don Phravorachith
Don Phravorachith is development director at Neo Design Concepts, a one-stop shop for everything related to internet marketing — from web design to SEO, email marketing, mobile applications and videography.
We asked Don for her advice when it comes to choosing a web designer.
- Check your prospect’s portfolio and look for these criteria:
- Aesthetically pleasing design
- Loads quickly (under 2 seconds) with standard internet connections
- Easy to navigate
- Interactive (Sites have social media and visitors can communicate with site administrators)
2. Make sure the company you choose has both design and development experience.
- A designer who lacks coding skills may rely on templates for web design. You want to hire someone who can customize website design and development. You also want someone who can do several different types of coding. Otherwise, the site might look pretty but will lack functionality.
- By the same token, someone who has mainly development experience might have great coding skills but lack appropriate design skills. Therefore, the site won’t look as good as it might.
3. 
What does the prospect do to make the site SEO-friendly?
- Does he or she incorporate meta tags?
- Does he or she incorporate heading tags for section headings or alt tags for labeling pictures and videos? Search engines only recognize text — so unless you label photos and video, the search engine will just see just a blank space.
4. Does the company offer a content management system (CMS) so you have control over textual content, images or videos? That way,you don’t have to pay someone to maintain the site for you.
5. Make sure that you – and not your developer – own the website, so you can take it with you if you change vendors. Some developers own your website. Make sure your contract gives you – and not the developer – ownership of your site.
