I'm a newbie here, but I've been coding for over ten years. After I typed up a quick response to this thread, I got an idea for an article. Here it is, expanded upon - ten rules for choosing a web designer or developer. If you find it useful, please let me know! Choosing a Web Designer There are millions of website designers out there, hundreds of thousands of companies, and thousands of cowboys. Choosing one to build your site can be very, very difficult, and people get ripped off every day – but here are some tips to help you find a reputable designer. 1. Make sure they don't use templates. Pre-built website templates aren't for designers; they're for people without any technical knowledge or design skills who want to knock up a website in an hour or so. There is no shame in using pre-made templates for personal sites, but a designer should never have to use them – and for a business site to be based on a template is very unprofessional. There could be a hundred other sites out there that look exactly the same as yours – not terribly handy for a business that wants to distinguish itself from the competition. If the company you're checking out uses templates, you may as well build the site yourself. 2. Make sure they don't lock you into their hosting. I went to see some folks in Chester today who'd been ripped off by their designers - they built an E-commerce website from a template, made the customer insert his own products, and charged him £450 for the privilege. Even more obscenely, they then expected him to pay three hundred pounds a year for hosting. Sadly, this sort of scam is all too prevalent. Get the company's hosting rates in writing – or, better yet, host the site yourself. If they offer to host it for free for the first year, that's fine – it's an accepted industry standard. But make sure that you're free to move your site to another host, and that your domain name is registered to yourself in case of disputes. You can find out who a domain name is registered to by running a WHOIS check. Test a few of the sites in the designer's portfolio, to make sure they're not registering their clients' domains under their own name. 3. Always look for testimonials that can be backed up with contact details or web addresses, a portfolio site hosted on a proper domain name (anything that sounds spammy like super-cheapwebsites-4u-2day.me.uk should be avoided) and a good command of written English. If they confuse "your" with "you're," or "it's" with "its," or "there" with "they're" or "there," they will make your company look horribly unprofessional and untrustworthy. 4. Use the W3C validation service to test their portfolio website for code errors. If they can't make code that passes validation for their own website, how well do you think they'll write yours? 5. Test their portfolio site, and sites they've made for clients, in at least both FireFox and Internet Explorer, to make sure that they display correctly. They don't have to look exactly the same – they probably won't, thanks to Internet Explorer's blatant disregard for Web standards – but make sure that you can at least move around the site and make sense of it, and that it looks half-decent. 6. If the designer uses a Hotmail address, run. If they won't give you a contact telephone number, run. Mobile numbers are acceptable and normal, due to the transitory nature of website designers, and shouldn't carry the stigma that they'd be associated with in other industries. If they ask to communicate via MSN or some other online messaging protocol rather than via telephone, run - unless they've got a damn good reason. Check to see if they're tax-registered, and that they'll be able to furnish you with an invoice and receipt, on letterheaded paper. 7. Meet up with your designer in person if you can. Obviously this is hard if they're overseas, but if you live nearby, ask if they charge a consultation fee - there's still no accepted standard for this, so some will and some won't. Consultation fees, therefore, shouldn't hold any reflection on the character of the designer - but, of course, should come into consideration when you're figuring out your budget. 8. Determine whether or not the designer will charge you for updates to your website, whether or not you'll be able to easily update your site yourself, and whether or not they'll still be around in a year's time to help you out with it. Contact the customers listed in their Testimonials section for confirmation, if needs be. 9. As a just-in-case, Google their business name (in quotation marks) just to see if there's any negative feedback left in forums. Don't ever buy website design services from eBay. Ever. Seriously. 10. Although this may run counter to a few of the things I've already said, be very wary of large companies offering website design services. The smaller companies, sole traders and partnerships, always do a better job for much less money. I hope these tips help to steer you away from disreputable designers, but remember to use your common sense, shop around, and keep your wits about you. If you'd like to check out my own services, please feel free to have a look at http://www.stainless-design.co.uk (for web design) and http://www.hostingforaquid.co.uk (for web hosting). Please feel free to reprint this article, but please do not modify it or remove my links. Good luck!
Addendum: 11. Nobody can guarantee to get you a specific place in Google. There are far too many variables, and too many of them beyond the developer's control, for anybody to reliably guarantee any given position in Google's rankings for any given keyword(s). If your considered developer offers such a guarantee, they are lying.
Oh, AND: 12. If your designer or developer offers "copy protection" for your website, again, they are lying. No effective form of copy protection has ever been created, and never will be, no matter what anybody claims. This is as inviolable as the law of gravity or relativity. It is much better to accept that people will steal from you, and turn that to your advantage. Google "Creative Commons," "Cory Doctorow," and, more recently, "Radiohead" for inspiration.
You have to love how "guides" are always slanted to wards the writers business model - eg 10 - yes a company will have more overheads than a freelancer and so will cost more but you also get the benefits that a company can offer eg you use someone to create a bespoke web application and whilst the developer who wrote it is on holiday treking through the jungle you find a show stopper bug in the system. With a sole trader you have to either live without your website for 2 weeks or pay another developer to fix it but they will first of all have to work out how the code works. With a company there will be other developers there to look over the problem with full documentation of how it works plus it will (or should have with a decent company) been created using their standard methodologies making hand over easy. 1) Templates are fine if they tell you this or you ask for it - we dont use templates but clients have on occasions asked for one to reduce development costs 2) I would recommend against going for this type of company but again as long as you are aware then you can make an informed decision. Clarifying ownership/ licenses for design/ images/ code etc is more important in my opinion 3) Certainly look at portfolios, personally dont trust testimonials as they are so easy to fake, but would add to look for ways of telling that they were indeed involved. It would be easy for me to say "we created the BT website" but unless it has our footer, our meta tags or we can show you a fully working version within our servers/ domain then you have no idea if they did create it or not. Dont look at spelling in the content - almost all of our sites have CMS and so even if we correct our clients spelling in the copy they provide they can change it themselves with miss spelling. Why would you penalise a company for its clients spelling issues? 4) Why is W3C compliant code important? There are many threads on here already proving it doesnt impact SEO/ Usability/ Cross browser compatibility if they use <br> rather than <br /> but header it to be xHTML 5) Agree in principle however there are occasions that a client may want a site where they know what technologies their users will be using. For example one of our clients wanted a tool for their employees to use who all have an obscure OS2 web browser which handles CSS differently to any other browser we have worked with. The site looks terrible in other browsers but our client knew this and was happy to accept the issue. We obviously dont put this site in our portfolio for this reason but it is always worth considering 6) You are very inconsistant with your point - you say people should be established so a registered domain, letter heads etc but then contradict it by saying mobiles are fine. If the above is expected then a land line should also be expected. A "real" company can always divert the number to a mobile or call answering service if they are going to be out an office. I think my point on this is to make sure everything matches up. If they say they are a company with 100 employees then they should have all of the above (and more) where as if they say they are a 16 year old school kid doing it in their spare time then you shouldnt expect the above. It is when they are a 100 man company and their business cards are clearly home print jobs that you know there are issues somewhere. 7) Certainly discuss with your supplier to make sure you can get on with them as much as anything else. Face to face? not possitive it adds anything as some of the greatest programmers I have known look terrible and have no social skills and prospective clients would run a mile 8) Agree, other than the testimonials, but also explore options for ongoing support as many companies will offer discounted rates for a retainer fee (normally on a use it or lose it basis) 9) Predominately agree but remember that there are companies that will post fake complaints to damage the reputation of their competitors. Ebay - can if you want buy there but just be aware of the likely quality 10) Is garbage - see first paragraph 11) You have miss understood the other meanings of guarantee. There are large successful companies that will guarantee your google ranking with their guarantee being that if you dont achieve the level then you dont pay them 12) What you say is true but is too much of a broad brush stroke comment. You cannot copy protect a complete website but if someone is selling an ebook you can use DRM and other methods to protect their product which is part of their website. Obviously these arent fool proof but would pass most peoples definition of copy protection 13) Dont accept anyone who is able to give you a "fixed price" quote based on very high level requirements or on a "I want a site like Monster.com" type brief. 14) Make sure you know who you are dealing with and the risks and benefits that go with dealing with an organisation. Dealing with a 16 year old in their bedroom is not an automatically no go as long as this is what you know they are