Yesterday did not go as planned and I didn’t get a chance to post my thoughts on how small business owners should look for a local web design team.  So without further ado, lets get to it!

First of all. it’s important to make it abundantly clear that I don’t believe that you need a traditional web designer if you are a small business. You need someone who understands marketing and how to write and design for your target market. It’s all well and good if you happen to find someone who writes in perfect code and can still speak coherently (i.e. without geek-speak!) but if they don’t know how to effectively market your site and draw the qualified traffic to your site through online and offline methods - then you could end up with a pretty digital brochure.

You don’t want that! Pretty sites can feed your ego, but they often don’t feed your bank account. You want a site that does both.

So how do you find someone that will deliver what you need that will provide an actual return on investment for your efforts? (Keeping in mind you have to deliver an exceptional buying experience to keep the customers once they turn from leads into clients!)

The first stop is Google. Type in Web Design and the name of your town. Consider the businesses who have listings next to the map that should be at the top of the page.  Why should these be your top considerations? Because you know at the very least that they know how to get a listing in Google Maps.

This is much more important than the designers who are featured in the left hand column. They paid for those spots - whereas the ones on the right did not have to pay. While Pay Per Click Ads (that’s what the ads on the left of the screen are called) are a legitimate and important part of some web marketing efforts, as a small business owner you’ll likely be concerned with keeping costs down as much as possible - especially with a new web project.

You’ll also want to give consideration to those who appear below the map on the right hand side of the screen. These are designers who have the search engine optimization skills to get you on the front page of Google for your industry. You should look especially carefully at those who are both on the map and in the listings below.

With a piece of paper (or an open Word file) to take notes, it’s time to click on the links.

Now keep in mind that most designers do their best work for their clients and their own sites tend to be a little less than spectacular. I call this the “Cobbler’s Kids Shoe” effect. It doesn’t always apply, but it can. So that’s why I think it’s really important to look at the portfolio of the designer before making judgements about their overall skills.

When looking at sites the questions you want to ask yourself are?

• Is the writing easy to read and free from obvious errors?
• Is the navigation clearly defined and easy to follow?
• Do I know who the target market for this site is?
• Is there an obvious lead generation strategy in place? (Email list, newsletter, points club?)
• If I was the target market for this particular product or service, would I visit this site more than once?
• Is it obvious what the keywords would be for this website? If yes, write them down.

After you’ve looked at about three sites from each designer, go back to Google and type in the keywords for the sites that you’ve looked at. Do they show up in the first page of results for their keywords? Do they show up in the first page results for their keywords plus their city or town? If the site is relatively new, it may not show up in the search engines yet, but this is still a good test to run.

Many designers will not pass this test, but there will be some who do. If there are none who pass the test, you’ll want to pick up the phone and call local clients from their portfolio and ask - have they seen increased business or results since the website was designed or redesigned. (Keep in mind that they should have had the site active for at least six months for this to be a fair question…and keep in mind that some business owners don’t have a measurement or tracking system to determine where customers are coming from)

By this point in time you should have a fairly clear idea of one or two designers that will meet your needs and be competent at both design and marketing of your site. If you don’t, then you may have to do a little more digging. The next best step is to make an appointment with one or two of the designers to discuss your goals and needs.

A good designer will likely have lots of questions for you to answer, but should be listening more than talking during your initial meeting. They should be able to describe what they do in language you can understand and should make you feel that marketing is a priority in their design process. Be sure to ask for names of others they have recently designed for (even if you have already searched through their portfolio online).

Rapport really is the key to getting a great website built. You should feel comfortable with the designer and feel confident that they will be able to turn your vision into an online reality. You should also feel that they will be confident enough to tell you when your ideas might not be in the best interest of your goals.

There are times when business owners would like to add something to their site that they have seen somewhere else online that won’t work with their target market or that doesn’t add to the selling power of the site. You need to know that your designer will tell you when something is not going add to the value of your website and increase your return on investment. You don’t want a designer that simply listens and incorporates your ideas if you don’t have a background in online sales. While you don’t have to take their advice (sometimes you may want to add a feature just for fun), you should be able to rely on your designer to advise you on the pros and cons.