If you are planning to design or redesign your web site, be it for a personal blog, a photo gallery showcase of your work, or just to give information to your customers, it’s good to know what the process is going to be. The best designers, like the best photographers, follow a workflow to help them ensure that 1) they understand the client’s needs, 2) the client understands their own needs (you’d be surprised how little we know about what we need or want, but a good designer can help us flesh this out), and 3) that both designer and client agree on the cost, time frame and deliverables.
If your designer does not do the three things above, be on your guard. There are many fly-by-night freelancers who will promise you a great design for a couple hundred bucks. What you end up getting is a template that you can freely download from the Internet. And there is no follow-up, barely any customization and the overall effect is cheesy and amateurish. It might look great to you with all the flash and animation and sound and colors — but it is still very amateurish.
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