How do you hire a web designer?
You’ve determined that the best way to create a professional, modern, mobile-friendly new website is to hire a professional web designer to build it. To hire the best person for the job — and to get the web design that best fits your company’s identity — it’s important to ask a few key questions:
What’s the scope of the work? Will the website be basic with just a few pages about your company, its services, and contact information? Or will it also have an e-commerce section for online shopping, a blog, or content for visitors to download? Before you hire a web designer, make sure you have a thorough, specific list of the components you must have the designer include in the web design.
What do you want your website to look like? Consider websites that are similar to the one you’d like to build, ideally in the same industry or serving similar types of customers. Build a set of examples of types of pages, design aspects, and website features that you can hand off to the web designer — the person you hire should have experience creating websites with the features you want. If they don’t have the right skill set, they’re not the right pro for you.
What’s the web designer’s start-to-finish process? What will the final deliverable be? Before you hire someone, make sure their availability works with your timeline and that their process meets your expectations. Most important is finding a web designer who will work collaboratively with you to create a successful online presence.
Who builds apps?
Apps are usually built by software developers who specialize in mobile software. They may be experts in just one mobile software development language or know several, and may have expertise in front-end or back-end web development. No matter what kind of phone or tablet you carry, there are hundreds of apps for it — and new ones seem to be added to the app stores every day.
Before you hire an app developer, it’s important to have specific goals for your app and a clear idea of its purpose. When your company is ready to build an app, you can hire a freelance app developer or work with an app development company that can also support the app after it’s launched. It’s important to know whether you’ll need the developer to provide ongoing maintenance and support or if your internal IT team can maintain it after its launch.
What do you look for in a web design company?
The web design company you choose must be able to interpret your company’s mission and identity and turn it into an appealing website that connects with potential customers. They must help you reach your target audience and meet your business goals. A web design agency should have on staff both talented web designers, with fresh ideas and extensive technical and creative skills, and a marketing team that knows how to drive traffic to your site, encourage visitor engagement, and convert visitors into customers. Web designers should be able to build in search optimization and integrate your site with a content management system and e-commerce tools. Look, too, for a website design company that understands responsive design and can optimize your website for mobile devices and desktop browsers. The right web design company understand current design and website trends, has experience building sites in a variety of industries (not just yours), and has an expansive portfolio of live websites. Finally, don’t simply hire the cheapest bidder — in web design, as in all things, you get what you pay for.
How much does it cost to hire an app developer?
Software development is a serious investment for any company, costing thousands of dollars for even basic apps. It’s tough to estimate costs because there are so many variables to each project: user requirements, feature set, complexity, size, etc. Mobile apps can cost from $20,000 to more than $100,000, depending on what you need the app to do. The average national cost of an app developer is $237.50 per hour, but prices vary widely depending on location, type of app, features, and much, much more.
To get a sense of what hiring an app developer might cost, decide first what kind of software you need. In general, app developers charge hourly fees based on the language they’ll use to code the software. Freelancers cost less than large software development firms, typically charging an average of:
Basic C development: $75-$150 per hour.
Front-end web development: $50-$75 per hour.
Back-end web development: $75-$150 per hour.
API development: $75-$150 per hour.
Desktop app development: $30-$100 per hour.
Mobile app development: $30-$150 per hour.
Larger software vendors charge much more, often as much as $300 to $400 per hour.
How much do web designers charge?
The average cost for hiring a web designer varies greatly depending on the scope of the work, which may range from building a site from scratch to rebranding an existing one, as well as the amount of content and graphics the designer will create. In general, the more complex the project, the more time the design agency will have to spend. Because web designers often work on an hourly basis, the longer the project, the higher the costs; you can count on the web designer spending at minimum 10 hours to create a very basic website with just a handful of pages with few elements. Prices also depend on the designer’s skill set, the process, and the company’s rates. In general, the national average cost for a basic website package starts at $500, but a customized website can cost as much as $2,000 or more. Here are typical average hourly rates, broken out by the complexity of the work:
Basic layout and user interface: $15-$40 per hour
Content management system design: $20-$50 per hour
Custom website design with custom code: $45-$75 per hour