5 hidden attributes of a freelance web designer

He sees only impossibilities

Caveat: Not all things are possible when it comes to designing a website. For instance, you can create a site that will give your visitors wings to fly. However, there are some awesome things your website can do for you.

You bump into an incredibly cool website while working on yours with your website designer. You ask if you could have the same cool feature on your website and your designer tells you it is impossible. If it is impossible, how can someone else do it?

However, there could still be some logical explanation why he said so. It could be that

• Your budget can get you the awesome feature
• The configuration of your site won’t allow the feature
• Implementing the design will cut down the accessibility of your visitors to your website

As true as all this maybe, the truth is that whenever a designer tells you “That can’t be done”, what s/he is really telling you is that “I have no clue how to do that”. It may be true that no one knows everything, but you may have to seek the services of someone else if the person you are working with keeps seeing impossibilities.

S/he offer very cheap website design services

Some couple of years ago, I had to complete an internship as part of my curricula. I offered discounts to clients I work for. I did this because I wasn’t as skillful as my colleagues.

If the person designing your website is willing to accept $150 from you, I can categorically tell you that fellow isn’t skillful enough. No professional website designer will be willing to accept $150. People who know their worth will definitely charge you higher than that.

Whenever someone offers to do an awesome website design for you at an insanely low fee, I can assure you that s/he is either; 1. Making a fool out of you because they are trying to learn website design using your project 2. They are scammers

His or work can’t survive updates

A client I once worked with about a year ago left me for another freelance web designer. The dude who my runaway client approached not only messed the work up, he also said something dumbfounding.

You need to exercise caution when updating plugins on your website. You should only update a plugin when it completely stops working, thus making it mess things up.

Guess why he said that; He most definitely did not do what was right and knew his work could get messed up whenever some plugins are updated. Though there may be some elements of truth to this, a good designer should be able to make your website rock solid enough to withstand any plugin.

Ultimately, my runaway client’s project flopped completely the moment her site updated some plugins. I had to come to her rescue but couldn’t help but laugh.

Updating the plugins your website shouldn’t cause a slight hitch to your website.

The designer uses plugins for every task

I will not want to expressly tell you to avoid website designers who know nothing about coding in order not to attract the wrath of some people. But I will like to state it in clear terms that your designer needs to understand how the internet works. What is the essence of a website if it is too slow?

Don’t be surprised to see a like that looks awesomely cool, only to discover that it has more than 70 active plugins. Imagine a client with more than 2,000 blog post who does not compress the images on his site. What about a site with hackneyed HTML format.

No matter how nice looking a website can be, it is of no use if its functionality is nothing to write home about. The optimal number of plugins that needs to be in a website is 25. The loading time for your homepage should not exceed 10 seconds. Your designer needs to bear in mind that certain elements will only make your website not to function properly.

S/he fails to explain how to properly use your site once the design has been completed

I have seen a lot of designers who are scared to death of losing their clients or allowing them manage their website themselves. For this reason, they make it difficult if not impossible for their clients to make modification to their content of their website. Such designers won’t even give their client the chance to see their dashboard. They end up siphoning money from their clients in the name of monthly maintenance fee.

Some designers have gone as far as dis-enabling their visual post editor, dis-enabled every feature on the dashboard except those that allow a user add or remove a post. I have seen a client who was denied the administrative right of his blog. That is a red flag, that designer is a sucker.

That said, it is a bad idea to expect a designer to provide you with all round training on WordPress for free. Even at that, s/he needs to give you proper training on your website design. For instance, when designing websites for clients I use features like testimonials and portfolio or any other design feature I feel is unique enough. What I do after doing this is to send my client an email that contains some tutorials.