G7 Web Design

If you have some experience in web site design and want to make good money you can try acting as IT-outsourcing partner. Learn more what you should know and how to start.

Why offshore web design and development?

Offshore web site design and development help to keep prices at least 3-5 times less, for example, average hourly rate of web development services in USA is $35-75; in UK – $25-50, in Ukraine – $5-20.

How it works?

Typical plan is like that:

• You find a client who needs a web site, ask his/her requirements for the project and send to your offshore partner company.
• The partner makes a proposal and gives you the project estimation basing on his hourly rate, for example, $10.
• You mark up the rate $10/hour as high as you wish (and can – taking into consideration competition in your region, level of demand for web design services, and other marketing factors), for example to $30/hour, and sends the proposal to the client. So if the web design project is estimated on 50 man-hours of work, you charge the customer $1500, from which $500 you pay to your offshore partner company, and $1000 is your profit.
• The partner company works on the project and delivers it to you along with copyright for the work.
• You deliver the site to the customer.

Result – you have a satisfied client and good profit from the marked up price.How to start?

The first and most important step is to analyze market in your region and decide if it’s worth to start this business.

If you already have your own web design company it is easier for you because you already know situation in the market, gain certain reputation, have clients list, etc.
But don’t be afraid if you are new to web design business. Believe in yourself and work hard and finally you will be rewarded for all your efforts. As in any type of business, starting the one in web design area, you must ask yourself general marketing questions:

1. Who will be your customers?

2. Why they will order the web design services exactly form you?

3. Where and how they will get to know about you?

Without having clear answers to these questions you shouldn’t try to start anything.

The second step is to find trustful and reliable partner – offshore web design company – that will work as “development center” for your business. This company must have good experience in web design and development area, good reputation, top level of customer care and communication. There are many resources in the Internet where you can find necessary information – search engines, web design directories, outsourcing portals.

For example, you can try searching in search engines for appropriate key phrases “offshore web design”, “offshore web site design”, “offshore web development” and analyze sites of your potential partners.

Also here are several sites where you can find lists of offshore web design companies sorted by country.

http://web-designers.bluegeckonetwork.com/

http://www.theoutsourceguide.com/

http://www.1234-find-web-designers.org/

How to choose the right offshore web design partner company?

There are 2 main factors that determine your choice – cost and quality of web design work.

Cost

Basing on the average web design prices in your local market and your competitive abilities you set prices that you will charge to your customers. There are several methods of web design price calculation, most used are flat price for fixed web site packages, and price based on man-hour rate. Most web design companies operate with both and choose one depending on each project type and requirements.

Then you decide which profit you want to have and narrow down your search choosing companies with appropriate price range.

Quality

Consider the company reputation, portfolio of previous works, testimonials of previous customers, level of communication. Pay attention to payment policy and method, conditions of ready projects delivery, warranties, post-development support and maintenance.

If all details are agreed you may start partnership. Sometimes the first project is quite simple to test abilities of both parties and if everything is going well the partnership will bring mutual benefits.

Julia Ramyalg

Marketing Director

IT-Inventors

IT-Inventors is a professional offshore web site design company. We are located in Ukraine and due to local economy we can offer your affordable rate $10/hour for custom web site design and web development services. It’s at least twice less than average Western European rates and more than 3 times less than USA rates.

We have developed more than 130 projects for dozens of satisfied customers, established strong relations with partners from USA and UK.

Services we offer: Custom web site design, E-commerce web site design, Content Management Software [http://demos.it-inventors.com/cms1] integration into existing web sites, Real estate web site design, Flash sites design, Logo design, SEO.

Finding a web designer is the easy part- all you need to do is perform a quick search online and bingo, you’re presented with pages and pages of them in the search engine results. The hard part is choosing the right web designer for your individual project. Every web design project has a specific set of requirements and every web designer has a unique set of skills that may, or may not, be suitable for your needs. In this article, I’ll list some key factors that will help you find the right web designer and how you determine if they have the necessary skills to undertake your web development project.

Research the Web Designers Website and Online Portfolio

Every web designer should have a functioning website and an online portfolio of their work. If they don’t, you can scratch them off the list. After you have found some web designers in your area, or anywhere else for that matter, you should research each of their websites and check out samples of their work. Different web designers take different approaches to their work and use a variety of technologies. You should read up on their skills and approach to web design, to make sure they suit your requirements. Viewing completed websites and samples of the web designer’s work is also essential to get a good idea of the design style and skills they have. Make sure the websites function correctly. If some of the web designer’s recent samples are not working, there is a good chance that, if you use them, your website might have the same issues. Look at the design style of their portfolio samples. Most web designers tend to stick to a particular style. If you like the look of their websites, and their website text sounds appealing, you’re onto a winner. Take the next step and call them, or send a project brief through.

Speak to Your Chosen Web Designers

Another key point to determine which web designer is best for you, is finding out whether you can communicate with them. You will need to explain your vision to the designer and they should be able to respond with ideas and suggestions for your project. If you call your designer and there is, for example, a language barrier between you, that could be a problem throughout the development process. Talking to a potential web designer also gives you a good idea whether you are going to get on with them or not. If you call to speak with your chosen web design company and you are put on the phone to a rude or uninterested individual – in my books, that would not be somebody you would want to deal with on an ongoing basis. If they are enthusiastic, keen and communicate well you are more likely to have a successful ongoing professional relationship.

Qualification and Experience

Qualifications and experience are not always essential but they do give you some security that the web designer knows what they are doing and has the skills to undertake your project. It’s really up to your judgment whether you want to use a web designer with no experience but you never know, they might be a young gun with tons of talent and is just waiting for that first project to unleash their skills on to. Whether you prefer your web designer to have qualifications or not is also up to you. Qualifications just mean they have had some formal recognition of their skills. My preference would be experience beats qualifications any day. Your web designer may have undertaken a six month course which has got them a certificate of some sort but that does not make them a good designer. There is so much information online and ways to hone your design talents now, that needing somebody to teach you is not essential.

Creative Vision

It is very important the web designer you speak to understands your creative vision. To create a website that truly serves a purpose and business goal, the designer need to understand the nature of the website and relate to your overall vision. Take note on whether the web designer offers any ideas or suggestions when you’re talking to them. This is a good indication of whether they understand the project and are enthusiastic about it.

The Right Technology

Different web projects need different technology behind them. Not all web designers have all the necessary skills for some types of web development. For example you may need a full content management system with database driven content and advanced search engine optimisation. This is something not all web designers can provide. Most designer’s will tell you straight away if they are unable to complete the project, due to technical limitations. It is up to you as a client to inform the designer of all the feature’s you anticipate your website to have so they can tell you whether they can complete it.

A Reasonable Cost

The cost of the web project is normally the key factor in how people choose their web designer. The scope of your project and what budget you have can limit what designer you choose. If you have a very small budget but want to build the next Facebook, any sane web designer will tell you they can’t help you. However, it is always good to get a few quotes and see which designer can offer the best package, for a reasonable cost. If they’re too expensive, it might be because they are a larger company with more overheads, or they are simply very good at what they do. If they are cheap, do a bit more investigation before committing – Cheap web design may end up costing you more in the long run, as it probably won’t serve its purpose very well and you will need to get it rebuilt. The cost of web design is often open ended… ‘how long is a piece of string?’… A good web designer should be able to explain the reason why they have quoted a certain price, and discuss what they can do within your budget – Just because you have received an initial quote that may be higher than you originally anticipated, talk to your designer about it. Quite often, there could be features or aspects of the quote than can be removed, or modified, to get the project back within your budget – If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.

At Big Click Studios we can turn your web development vision into a functioning web site that looks great, works perfectly and ranks well. Our web designers take the time to understand each and every project to make sure, you as a client, gets a return on your investment.

To read more about web design, web development, web marketing, SEO and business growth please visit – Big Click Web Design.

Whenever I thought of web design my face would frown, I just hated the fact that I had to do any kind of web design. I just couldn’t see why web design was simple for others and not for me.

Well, that all changed when I discovered this simple program, a web design machine made for those who just don’t understand that you can do it yourself if, you would only keep your web design as simple as possible.

Since using this program I have been able to launch two websites with my own web design style within two months, these websites aren’t perfect, but they do look very professional.

And, they carry my touch, yes, at last I can boost to my friends how easy web design is for me, because they have no clue that I am using my little secret weapon for my web design.

What does it take to design your own website?

Now, for those who don’t understand what it takes to design your own website from scratch, I will give you five important steps you need to master, before you can get your website to the next level.

Five steps for perfected web design:

1) You Need Some Type Of Web Design Software

No one and I repeat no one, is doing web design the expensive way (The truth: Some are still wasting money paying for web design). Those who has enough money, pay for their web design, and those who can’t will have to get their hands on a easy to use web design software that gets the job done.

2) You Need To Know Some HTML

No matter what type of web design software your using, you must educate yourself with a little HTML. There is no way around that. Once you get the feel for simple little HTML code snippets, you will notice that you never ever need to know more than that, because you already have my little secret weapon ( My secret web design software program, that I will lead you to very soon).

3) You Need To Know How To Layout Your Website

Wow, another killer, I had no clue how or what to do, much less layout a web site. That all changed when I bought my little secret weapon, it came with a manual loaded with tips on not only how to use the software, but also how to layout your website template.

4) You Need To Master Internal Linking

If you going to design your own website, you must know how to internally link you website together. Ah, well, not really if you have my secret web design software you won’t need to know how. This is taken of by the program, it creates all your internal linking,
without you even understand how it’s done, isn’t that cool.

5) You Need To Keep Your Web Design Simple

This one should have been number one, because it is so important and yet so overlooked. Look around the web and notice the top sites online, they are all use very simple web design with lots of white space. Don’t get flashy if your building a website for profit.
Look at Google and Yahoo, they are very simple and that’s what you need to do when you design your website.

Anyway, I have given you some tips that should set your web design on fire, if you follow and study successful web sites online, you will see the trend, simplicity wins the web design war.

And now, for the long awaited secret weapon, just browse over to this simple web designed site and watch the video, you will understand why this is a secret weapon that only the guru’s use, once you try it.

Be advised, your web design doesn’t get return visitors, it is well written and informative content, so why spend thousands on web design, while searchers are only looking for information.

Alexander Marlin, Ebenezer St. Maarten A.N. He only uses simple web design tricks and teaches you how to build a website [http://how-to-build-website.com] that isn’t an eye sore. One of his many profitable websites can be found at [http://how-to-build-website.com]

As a web designer, I get all kinds of requests for information other than web design, and as a web designer I’m not really suppose to be able to do things outside of the web design area. I believe there are a few misconceptions about what exactly a web designer does. In this article I am going to nail down exactly what a web designer is and what they should be able to do. First I’ll touch of the differences between a web designer and a web developer. A web designer is someone who creates the visual design and layout of a web page. A web developer is someone who does the behind-the-scenes programming of a website. For example a web developer creates the code for database websites.

Web designer’s definition:

They give business/organizations a web presence by building them a website. Web designers are professionals who organize information, create page layouts, while communicating the business’s information/opinions in a website. Web designers create another medium for the business to expand into. Creating a website enables the business to attract new customers, showcase its services/products, and to do business across countries (as opposed to one location).

What things do web designer’s do?

That’s a really good question. It is definitely hard to nail down what every designer must do in order to call themselves a web designer. A good web designer should be able to do both the design and the development, unfortunately for you the consumer, it doesn’t always work that way.

Your web designer must be able to perform the following:

* Understand and keep current will all new emerging technology

*Layout web pages using HTML, XHTML, XML , and other programming languages

*Program HTML (hand code), JavaScript and CSS

*Translate your ideas, needs and expectations into a web page

*Design navigation elements (such as navigation bars)

*Create graphics in Photoshop or any other professional imaging software

* Effectively participate in a web development team

* Have an understanding on how to create Flash (authoring software used to create animation programs)

*Understand and implement web standards

* Have an understanding of Search Engine Optimization

* Have a basic understanding of typography, graphics and color theory

* Understand needs of users and of usability testing

* Have ability to analyze a target market

* Understand cross browser problems and how to fix them

A great web designer also has knowledge of coding languages such as:

* C++

* Python

* Java

* JavaScript

* Cold fusion

* SQL

* PHP

Sometimes it might be difficult for a web designer to have all those different programming languages under their belt. It is like knowing English, French, Chinese and German. Quite complicated. The more languages they know the better. Well that should help you on your search for a good web designer!

Alicia Harper is the owner of a Vancouver Web Design company and is a professional web designer [http://www.alicia.beseenwebdesign.com].

On the Internet today, there are many people who call themselves web designers and web design companies. Some people do it for fun, as a hobby or part-time. Web designers that design full-time are the way to go.. Someone who does web design in their part-time tends not to take it as seriously as someone who does it for a living. There are also people who do web design, who have no formal training. Make sure your web designer has some formal training from a recognized school. People who are self taught, although I applaud them for doing it, have relied on the Internet for all their information, and as you know information on the Internet can be inaccurate.

Relevant Experience

The web design company you choose for your project should have relevant experience. If you would like them to design a e-commerce website, it is best to choose a web designer who has e-commerce websites in their portfolio. Your web design company should be ready to submit a proposal for your website project along with a contract. Beware of companies who don’t give you a formal contract. The contract should outline exactly what the web designer will do and how long it will take, the price, and what you have agreed to supply. A formal contract is the best way to avoid disagreements between the web designer and you. Make sure your contract outlines every possible problem that can happen.

Different types of websites

There are different types of websites such as: static HTML (brochure type), e-commerce (with a shopping cart), database, Flash and a website with your own content management system. All of these must come into perspective when you are looking for a web design company. For example if you are looking for a fully interactive Flash website you better make sure that the web design company you choose has done many Flash websites. There is a difference between companies who can do Flash headers for a standard HTML site and web designers who can create a full flash website. Your best bet when choosing a web design company is to have a face to face meeting when discussing what it is you would like to have your website look like , also some sketches and some addresses of websites that you like. This gives the web design company the chance to fully understand what you are looking for and a better chance to give you an accurate proposal.

Things to take into consideration

Does the web design company have an update package? You must know that after your website has been created, from time to time you will require updates. Maybe they will be small maybe not. If the web design company you are choosing does not have an update package, you should inquire about the price of updates after the initial design. You should take the price of updates into consideration before you begin the design process. Make sure the web design company or web designer you choose sets realistic goals for the timeline. Usually if it sounds too good to be true then it is.

Many web designers have their own personal style. For example my personal style is clean and bright colors. Some web design companies love Flash and always build Flash websites. This would not be ideal if you are looking for an extremely search engine friendly website.

You would also have to consider guarantees. Does your potential web design company offer a guarantee? Most web design companies do not. So when you find one who does, you can know that they feel very confident in their capabilities. Another thing to consider is: Does the web design company display a phone number that they can be contacted at. Sometimes as a client you would like to speak with someone, not just get a reply to an e-mail the next day.

How to a find a web design company

There are a few ways to find web design companies in your area. One way is to search the web for: “Vancouver web design” or “Sarasota Web design”, obviously depending on the city closest to you. You could also search the Yellow pages for web design companies. Most web design companies who can afford to advertise there have already built a pretty go reputation and have been in business for a while.
Another option is search the web and when you see a website you really like, check for a link on the bottom of the page or on a contact page.

Alicia Harper is a vancouver web designer and she owns a Vancouver Web Design Company that specializes in web design and search engine optimization. Feel free to e-mail her with any questions about this article.