Auburn, WA1377 Designers near you

Your website is often the first thing your customers see when they’re searching for a business or service on the web. As the face of your organization, your website needs to be attractive and functional, offering the latest features that users now expect. To plan and design a site that both reflects your company’s mission and values and appeals to customers takes a professional web designer. While free online services can help people set up websites, web designers can provide a unique solution made specifically to meet customers’ personal or business needs.

Most web designers offer a wide variety of services to make your website aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. Modern web design must be mobile-friendly and scalable, capable of expanding to include a blog, social media sites, and even video streaming; web designers are experts at integrating various web technologies. They can build the site, add functionality, test it, launch it on a live server, and track and maintain its performance.

In addition to web design and graphic design, some web design providers also offer development and security services, including search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing and management, logo design, site maintenance, domain registration and hosting, protection against malware, and digital marketing and content services.

Interior designers do much more than pick complementary paint colors and choose matching furniture — although those tasks are important parts of the job. Unlike decorators, interior designers usually have an associate of science degree or certificate of achievement in interior design from an accredited program. They’re trained in drafting, lighting and computer aided design (CAD), and are experts in room-specific design and residential space planning. Interior designers use these skills to plan and design safe, highly functional and beautiful interior spaces, from kitchens and bathrooms to family rooms and bedrooms. They determine space requirements, work within building codes and inspection regulations, and meet accessibility standards. An interior designer’s day-to-day job includes creative and technical tasks, both of which often require great communication skills:

• Creating model rooms and visuals using design software.
• Researching different textiles, materials, finishes, lighting and furniture.
• Hiring suppliers, vendors, and contractors.
• Estimating costs and making bids on potential jobs.

A professional web designer creates the look and feel of your website, collaborating with you to choose colors, creating logos and other branding materials, establishing page layouts, and creating sample pages. An important part of web design is making sure the site is functional, meets your goals, and is easy for users to navigate. When you’re looking to hire a web designer, start by reviewing the person’s portfolio. Look for samples of work that match what you envision for your website, including experience building the types of pages or features you want. Make sure the web designer is familiar with your industry and understands both industry trends and web design trends — an old-fashioned or out-of-touch site will turn customers away rather than intrigue them.

Because web designers tend to work as freelancers on a project basis, they must be excellent communicators, willing to manage their own work, and available on your schedule. Some critical skills, such as working collaboratively and responding enthusiastically to feedback, aren’t core to good web design, but make working with a web designer much easier. Finally, look for a web designer who has cross-functional knowledge, such as understanding marketing and conversion rate optimization in addition to web design.

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

Logo design is an important part of your company’s brand development. More than an image with text and color, a logo communicates the tone and personality of your company to your potential customers. Hiring a graphic designer with an appealing portfolio and quality reviews is a solid start to creating a winning logo design. The cost to create a logo can depend on how in-depth the marketing and design services you request are. Designers can create one logo in multiple formats (horizontal, vertical, etc.) to fit both your website and social media platforms, they can create a variety of designs for clients to select from, or they can create multiple logos for one client who needs branding for more than one venture. Logos may be text-only, text and image, or image-only. Many designers and design firms charge by the hour for their services, while other companies offer packages bundled with design services. Here are some examples of cost:

• National average cost to hire a logo designer: $170-$250.
• Average hourly rate for a freelance marketing consultant: about $150.  
• Tiered pricing for logo design packages from one firm:
• Package One: $200 for three logo concepts, three rounds of revision, and a variety of format and color end designs.
• Package Two: $350 for 10 logo concepts, unlimited rounds of revision, and a variety of format and color end designs.
• Package Three: $550 for everything included in the Package Two, plus business card design, letterhead design, social media graphics and an email signature.
• Package Four: $850 for everything in the Package Three, plus custom brand guidelines, which outline a strategy for creating a consistent branding in the client’s business.