FAQs
- What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
I am continually learning new development and marketing skills through various online training programs. When I started doing web design, the choices were very limited for expanding your skills in course-like settings. Traditional educational courses are way behind, because of bureaucracy. Today, there are more ways to learn new skills than you can count. I've used subscription courses like Treehouse, Code School, Codecademy and Lynda for web development with much success. There are also free tutorials everywhere you look. Codrops is a particular favorite of mine. I take marketing courses from sources like HubSpot and Google Partners to learn more about customer acquisition and the marketing funnel. I also pay for specialized training courses from time to time.
- What types of customers have you worked with?
The most common clients I have either have e-commerce websites or business websites. Occasionally, I will contract out to larger agencies, doing work for established brands and businesses. These are good projects too, because they help me stretch my web development and problem solving skills beyond.
- What advice would you give a customer looking to hire a provider in your area of work?
Do your homework on a service provider. Really dig into their website and see if their philosophy feels like something you can work with. See if you can find out about the people who will be working with you on your project. Don't make decisions based solely on price. In the WordPress community, we get a lot of clients whose experiences were terrible because of the provider they worked with before. There's the misconception that good web design is cheap. But like anything else, you get what you pay for. Because WordPress is deceptively easy to get started with, many people decide to become web designers. But they often hit a learning curve early on. These low-cost providers are often just "power users" and cut and run when a project becomes too difficult or they are in over their head. Use established web designers with a proven track record. You will pay more, but your site will be faster, more secure, better optimized for users and search, and built to last. Find someone that you can have a long-lasting business relationship with. Websites are never finished. They are a constantly evolving marketing machine that require upkeep. Your web agency should be someone you can turn to for advice and guidance when it comes to web marketing and development.