After my article last week about web design horror stories, a natural follow up question is:
“Have you ever hired a web designer and felt DELIGHTED?”
I know I have…
And today I’d like to invite you to your wonderful experience.
But before you share your story, consider this:
What went well?
What made the experience AMAZING?
What’s the ONE thing your web designer did that made you feel GREAT?
Be as specific as possible.
(Side note: You’ll soon see why I sparked these two discussions 
).
If you enjoyed this article, enter your email below to get free updates!
{ 46 comments }
Eugen Oprea to combine two WordPress installations, something I know how to do myself, but don’t have time or patience to hassle with it.
Eugen is “fire and forget.”
Hi Dave, thanks for sharing the example. But today, I’d like to focus on what exactly made the experience so great? Is it that you emailedh im, he got on the job right away, and did it with little help or interaction from you? What specifically was so nice about “Fire and forget.”
I’m really, really busy at the moment, busy enough I’m weighing opportunity costs. As a result, I decided to outsource some WordPress which I would have normally done myself.
I contacted Eugen Oprea with more or less: “Can you take everything from Blog A and combine it with Blog B, shut down Blog A, ensures everything redirects, no collisions in post_id and get everything in wp_content moved. If so how much?”
Price was very reasonable.
At the point I sent him money and asked him to contact me when it was done. No brainer for me.
On a related note, I would normally have gone with Anca Mosoiu who owns and operates Tech Liminal in Oakland, CA, which is more or less local to me. (Disclaimer: Anca and I have run Website In A Weekend workshops together.) But this job was smaller than I wanted to bother her with; she’s moved into much higher end work.
I’m a designer/dev myself but occasionally I’ll hire someone else to take care of things if I’m lacking in time and/or patience.
I needed a a particular plugin moded (specifically I wanted everything I didn’t need it to do removed and streamlined). I contacted the author, Pippin from http://pippinsplugins.com/
The guy is not only a plugin PRO but he is polite, stands behind his offerings, and is efficient as hell. A few days later I had what I needed and at a reasonable price.
If you ever need anything done with WordPress plugins, he is the man to contact.
Tell me more. What made working with him so great? Was it just a job well done? Did he do anything else that left you feeling awesome?
Way ahead of you. See below.
I should be a bit more specific. It was his eagerness to get me what I needed, the speed in which he answered emails, his affordable pricing, and the fact that he gives back to the community with ridiculously detailed and informative tutorials that made the difference.
Yes, but obviously this was before I learned to do it myself. LOL Unfortunately, she closed her business, but she was phenomenal at design. I can only hope to one day be half as good as she is. She did everything I asked and more. And if she didn’t know how to do it, she figured out a way to make it happen.
The bonus? We’re now friends and have been since she designed my old site three years ago.
Hey there,
I have hired a designer before and was delighted with the work just not the turn around time and the service. A simple design should not take 2 months to do. They just did not want to work and I know because I knew the designer. I know know how to design myself when it comes to static sites but I am looking for someone to design my blog now. I am not experienced in Wordpress coding all that much. I can do some basic stuff.
Anyway, hope people are getting great work and service.
Having designed websites for over 10 years, two months is a pretty standard time frame for a small to medium site.
I have an amazing web designer. She listens to me and understands what I want. She is fast and efficient and she is patient when I ask her the same questions over again. She trains me how to do what I can and does all that I don’t want to do. she is knowledgeable. I say, this is what I want, and she finds the app or widget or whatever to get it done. She is amazing. Evelin Turner you are divine!!!
We worked several times with Steve Stedman, http://stedmandesign.com/. He was excellent at being a bridge between the technical wonks and geeks and the non-technical people, and implementing both cleanly coded designs as well as getting the intent from the business owners onto a screen.
An example of this was when we brought him on to help us with an Air Force project. He not only was able to embed himself, add value as a remote team member – something they’d never worked with – and was willing to learn Ruby on Rails to pitch in on the other areas of the project that needed help, even though he wasn’t a coder. He also has a great understanding of human-computer interaction yet doesn’t crowd the room with excessive jargon when communicating.
Glenn Brubaker from http://www.internalwealthstudios.com is my website guru. His service rocks — he makes me feel like I’m his only client. Available on Skype, handles things timely and never rushes ME. He listens and delivers what I want and makes it better. He runs my website like he would if it were his own. Awesome blend of the most connected customer service and well, just good web development.
No I haven’t had a pleasant experience with designers. Have been way overcharged, lack of communication, failure to deliver, missed deadlines.
And to top it all off one guy left a back door in and tanked my site after not paying him 8K in “Security Upgrade” the hack happened every 23mins of restore. Couldn’t find the code anywhere…so yeah no positive experiences. I have lost over 34 k in funds trying to launch a site…who knows the potential income.
Heather Moritz @ Moritz Fine Designs is the “Hope Diamond” of Web Designers. She is truly one of a kind: kind, understanding, patient as well as being extremely talented in her field.
When I first started blogging I didn’t know what I was doing. I just thought “this looks interesting” and dove right in feet first. After about 6 months, I began to realize that I didn’t know what I was doing at the time and wanted to change directions in my blog content and design. I found several blogs that had Heather’s affiliation listed on them and decided to check her out. I even talked with her on the phone and from that point on Heather has been my “go to” designer for everything and anything related to blogging, SEO, hosting questions, etc.
One year later I am still using Heather on a regular basis, which thus far has been on a monthly basis for updates, tweaks, changes, etc. She has changed things for me and then changed them back the way they were for me and so on but she has always been patient and very easy to work with!
Heather, I can’t thank you enough for “being you”!!
I’ve attempted to hire designers over the past few years, but something always stopped me – and always it was money that I gave for the reason someone wasn’t hired.
But the truth is – I needed to trust someone to actually care what I wanted. I had to find someone I trusted with my vision, be willing to push me if I wanted something that wasn’t great.
I found Lisa Valuyskaya from the Ideastylist.com because I’ve worked with her on other people’s projects for the last year. I knew what she delivered – I understood her process – I saw how patient she was – I saw the quality of her work over and over again.
She did everything from top to bottom – mockup to development. She took the time to explain anything that didn’t seem right. She knew that I like to do some things myself, so she made everything “editable” for me.
The one thing that Lisa did to make me feel GREAT: She broke the whole process down into steps and then delivered above my expectations.
Love the recommendations.
1. Rapid response.
2. Challenging my assumptions – a little knowledge can be dangerous.
3. Clear about uncertainties and an approach to solve them.
I hired a web designer to create a site… He was the first (besides my girlfriend) to get genuinely excited about the site. Someone ‘in the know’ who thought the site was a wonderful business opportunity made me feel like gold. He also brainstorms with me (for free) about potential future projects, business ideas, and even politics. He’s a pretty great guy and always optimistic and productive to my mindset.
I couldn’t afford a designer plus needed a platform that I could run myself. I signed up with The Girls Guide To Web Design which provides a series of excellent tutorials that were clear and helpful about how to design a site and implement it using Thesis PLUS there is a FB group to help when you get stuck. I LOVE that I learned elements of design plus went from being a complete WP/Theis newbie to someone who is happily tweaking css, hooks, look and feel etc etc and I can continue to just learn and improve myself.
The guy who designed my website and logo was awesome (and still is – we are now friends, albiet long-distance ones). He communicated with me almost every day for 4 weeks, despite the fact that the project was a small one for him ($200).
He took the time to listen to what I had to say, and he acted on what he said he would do. This rapid communication and development allowed us to iterate several times into a design we both liked.
Hey Amit,
Who is the guy that you talking about ? do you have details for him?
thanks
Warren
Hi Warren,
His name is Rowland Jones – https://www.elance.com/s/rowlandwithaw/
Just make sure you like the look of my website – he’s big on minimalism.
I can’t give you a great example because I am the designer but I can tell you what I’ve heard clients say over and over. I talk real person language to them. So many times people in web dev talk tech speak that is confusing to people needing our help. The presumption that folks understand the technical terms thrown around is sort of funny…if they understood it then maybe they wouldn’t need our help?
I am in the process of another site rescue; sadly it’s an environment where any Tom, Dick, Jane or high school student can offer services without any attendant measure of qualifications. I would only caution this…most graphic designers are best suited for doing your graphic design. Get someone with real web development experience for building your website.
When Geoffrey Gordon of Blaze Web Studio (www.blazewebstudio.co.za) offered to create my photography website I was delighted because he had worked his magic with the websites of my previous employer, combining two old websites and creating a great new, modern, clean feel with Wordpress which was so much easier to manage.
Everything went so well.
Geoffrey took a few days to set up the site, which included posting the original sets of photos for each category. I was so excited when I saw the end result.
Then Geoffrey taught me how to resize and upload my new images daily and within a year we have made a number of adjustments and I remain delighted.
What made the experience amazing is his incredible focus and attention to detail, as well as the encouragement and care which he and his partner afforded me throughout the process. They are two of the most wonderful people I could have had in this venture. We became great friends in the process.
I feel great because he took the time, including a lot of his family time working with me after hours, to hold discussion and coaching sessions via Skype, to make my dream website a reality.
The roots of an amazing experience, for me, come from value. Usually in this area, that value (to me) is one of extending my own creativity, arrangements, and ideas, with those of one or more experts. The experts begin at the distance I could potentially go, and from that point, they run farther in the same general direction. If that goes well, I am one happy dude.
The experience is amazing and “goes well” when the least amount of time, friction, cost, and distraction are generated as byproducts of the value gained.
So if the value is getting “more than I could have done myself” and a guideline for “amazing” that “went well” is to have that value run smoothly, then that combines into the ONE thing that the designer (I’ll say developer here too, the lines blur) did to make me feel GREAT about them and the project.
I forgot to provide a specific name. On purpose somewhat, because I’ve had many good (and bad, too) experience of this kind, and I prefer not to name the good because I know there are some I will forget. But a big one just came to me; in fact, it’s so obvious I can’t believe I missed it. My individual, though he and I did not work together in the way I was considering in writing the above, is named Chris.
The reason I bought Thesis (four years ago) was born of the hope I could grow my boundaries and limitations — without spending the time building or updating/rebuilding a set of personal tools I had for a foundation. What Chris did, and what he and the team continue to do with Thesis, fulfills the same criteria I was imagining to describe a win-win designer/developer relationship.
Thesis is what I would have done, if I could have done. It’s been amazing, it’s been great, and it’s the one piece of software that I absolutely demand as a “must have” to take anything I want to do and make it happen. The community surrounding Thesis also contributes with snippets and ideas, making the entire package a lever on what I can do.
So that’s mine — and a here’s a huge thank you to the thousands of people I’ve had the chance to learn from and grow with along the way!
Dude, you have helped me so much in the Thesis forums over the last couple years! You deserve a thank you also.
The Thesis support forum is better than any support I have ever encountered.
I can’t ever imagine switching to anything else,
Jeremy
Although I hacked my site together myself (it looks like it – trust me). I would love to one day hire a designer to re-do it! I’m like some of you also. This is my baby – I’m afraid to let anyone touch it!
BUT – I did hire someone from Fiverr to do my site logo. And I have to say I was so happy with how it turned out! I was able to give them my simple idea and they ran with it. Very friendly, fast, and exactly what I wanted! And all that for five bucks!
I’ll definitely be bookmarking this post when I am ready to have someone re-design the site.
Laura Moore at http://smallestdecisions.net/ handled my web design and migration from blogger to wordpress. I had put off the move for way too long.
She was a dream to work with. Got back to me quickly. Did exactly what I asked for, and then suggested other things that would make my site better. Provided follow up services in case there were any glitches. Her price was reasonable and she came in under the estimated amount.
I literally did nothing more than approve the final website. No problems, even 8 months after going live. She was awesome.
I hired the guy who ran my servers to help me out with the design (which I thought was the reason why my traffic was dipping) He instead removed all unnecessary coding in the templates and Voila !! I was back at the top !!
I just want to second what Lynda Graham said about The Girl’s Guide To Web Design! That course was amazingly helpful and it allowed me to do what I wanted with my site without hiring a web designer. I found it really empowering to be able to set up my site the way I wanted to and tweak it as needed.
I had a web designer design my site a few years ago but whenever I wanted to make minor changes, I had no idea how to do it. I recently enrolled in the Girls Guide to Web Design (www.girlsguidetowebdesign.com) E-Learning course is helping me learn not only basic elements of design, but coding as well. I’m in the process of redesigning my site, this time using Thesis. I created the concept myself and enlisted the help of a web designer to create some of the more complicated design elements but I am doing the coding entirely on my own. I refer back to the GG2WD course constantly for guidance and support. It’s empowering to learn how to these skills.
I am almost done with The Girl’s Guide to Web Design and love it because Amanda makes learning html & css pretty painless! She also introduced us to Thesis, which is really cool. Thank you. I opted to sign up for the course, instead of hiring a designer because I need to know html & css to make myself more marketable, and I had a snazzy idea for an ebook that needs a lovely website where I can manage it myself instead of hiring a snobby designer!
I saw someone mention Girl’s Guide to Web Design in the comments. I too am in the process of taking this course and it is the best money I have evernspent. I am now able to have control of my website and Amanda, the instructor, makes it super fun and easy! I have had too many unfortunate experiences with web designer’s disappearing, so Amanda’s GGTWD has empowered me to do it myself!
Like many others have commented here, I also have taken the Girls Guide to Web Design (GG2WD) offered by Amanda Aitken. Instead of hiring a designer/developer, I wanted to learn how to do it myself because it gave me more control…and, well, it just sounded like fun. For all the women out there – I strongly believe that we learn differently than men, and this approach is totally catered to women. I completed the course and felt empowered. Now I want to pay it forward and help others learn how to design/develop.
I too am a student of Amanda Aiken’s GG2WD. What went well? The entire experience. I was able to plow through the content I needed when I needed it. The thing is that I am trained as a Professional Co-Active Coach yet I had this pull toward technology and creation. Naturally, I wanted to be able to serve my clients in the best way I knew possible. What became very clear after I re-did my own site using thesis was that ANYTHING is possible. I was able to re-create elements on my own site that I’ve admired on others only it was better because it was my Digital DNA I was creating. Talk about empowering!
I would have to say the one thing that Amanda does great is that all her juicy content is in one place for her ‘jet setters’ to access whenever the mood strikes. She shows us though her videos that she’s real and that to learn how to customize thesis, you play. Tweak one thing then another.
For me, the whole experience has been transforming. I now use my coaching skills to help other creative entrepreneurs get their web presence out there. The coaching niche I had thought had to be separate from my tech-y side has beautifully merged into a business that is me. Cuz that’s who I am and Amanda’s program combined with the most incredible theme for wordpress has made me one happy, passion filled girl who can code! And I’m pretty sure if I told my former colleagues (I was an elementary school teacher!) what I’m up to, they’d all say it makes sense. So great reading all these experiences.
Thesis ROCKS. #thatisall
I hired a designer to design my header and opt-in. My experience with her was delightful, she delivered on time, answered my questions had a reasonable price that fit with my budget. However the end result did not reflect what I had in my head and I was out of money for further reviews.
I stumbled upon the Girls Guide to Web Design and decided to give that a shot, my mama always told me “if you want something done right do it yourself”, so that’s what I am doing, between the ease of use of Thesis and Girls guide to web design tutorials I am tweaking my site if you are on a limited budget, have some spare time and are a do it yourself kinda gal, who wants to have the knowledge to make changes without having to consult your designer this is perfect for you.
A co-worker of mine was taking Girl Guide to Web Design, so I decided to try it because she told me how awesome it was. I was trying to teach myself web design before this, so taking this class just made learning so much easier. Plus Amanda gives you so many tips that probably would have taken me hours of research. I totally love the class, and the best part is that I can refer back to all the chapters anytime I want and there a great facebook support group that has answers so many question when I get stuck.
I have been a graphic designer for 25 years. (not a snotty one I may add). I have been using Wordpress for a few years now but with different themes. I am not a coder. I too found the Girls Guide to Web Design and it was the best money I have spent on any tutorial or book. It got me over the scarey coding hump. I now create beautiful sites for clients using Thesis and refer back to the Jetsetter course when needed. My clients come in for a 2-3 hour one on-one Wordpress tutorial and I hand over the keys. I’ve had a few do the happy dance in my office and hug me! It empowered me to combine my design skills with coding, and my clients to have the freedom and control to update their site on their own. Some of them have done the happy dance in my office and given me hugs! Its been a win, win, win!
I didn’t know it at the time, but the web designer I hired was ME!
I started a blog and wanted to control the look, so I chose the “.com” version of WP and, after reading a lot about themes, chose Thesis. Then, while looking for a Thesis designer, I stumbed on Girl’s Guide to Web Design (“GG2WD”) – I signed up for the “jetsetter” class and now I’m the designer of my own site!
1. what went well – the one-time fee was well within my (small) budget, and has no additional charges for subsequent tweaks and do overs on my site; the class is self-paced, so I can work on my blog according to my own schedule, even at 2am; I have access to the dynamic jetsetter community on facebook, so I can ask questions and get feedback; I can try out design changes myself, without having to communicate the concept to the designer, then wait for (and pay for) his or her implementation of those ideas.
2. what is amazing – how much control I have over the look and feel of my site – it’s not someone else’s interpretation of my vision – it’s my own!
3. what is delightful – that I can do so much more than a “bare bones” site – with every “chapter” in the class, I have loads of new design elements at my fingertips!
4. what is the one thing that made me feel great – that I actually “write code” for the elements on my website! I still can’t believe that I’ve gone from knowing zip to becoming “conversationally fluent” in html and css!
I ♥ GG2WD!
Last year I jumped the corporate ship and dove into my own business. I set out to do social media marketing and content creation for SEO for small businesses. On a whim, I signed up fro Amanda Aiken’s Girls Guide to Web Design course because…
…As I set out on my new journey, I was instantly blown away by how many of my clients needed more than just marketing tips – they needed to be empowered to manage their website. So many of my clients had had websites built that they couldn’t control or update, without reaching out to their web dev and paying $$$. Seriously, gone are the days when small businesses should be held hostage by a web dev/designer. Web devs should not need to support their business with updating hours, pricing and boring stuff on small business websites.
It’s true that many businesses may appear to not have time, know-how, or enough creativity to successfully manage/update their site – or to blog, but there are ways to guide these owners to easily and successfully accomplish this.
Whether you choose to hire a designer, or learn to DIY with a course like Amanda’s, the point is that small business owners should ask how their new website can evolve, be updated, and grow with their business.
I have never had the cash on hand to hire a designer directly, but I have been able to take advantage of learning from a pro – Amanda Aitken of Girls’ Guide to Web Design. Yes, she’s the same one mentioned by so many previous commenters! I’m in the middle of the course now, and I am confident that I will have a site that looks and works the way I want it to by the time I’m done. I also am finding that I will have a much better sense of how to work with a designer in the future, if/when my needs become more complicated. I especially love that Amanda breaks down the concepts so that I know how things are working together.
The very first (and LAST) time I hired a web designer was a total Fail. To be honest, it seemed like the person who did our website had no concept of Design Principles, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth. I eagerly signed up for a class on how to build websites using basic HTML (granted, this was close to a decade ago) and decided to take the matter into my own hands. As mundane as some of the coding was, I really enjoyed the design process. Then I started blogging for fun, using Wordpress, and then I got hooked. I am currently in the process of re-vamping a couple of websites for my Landscape/Design business, as well as other creative projects. I played around with the idea of hiring a web designer, but the more I thought about it, the more complicated it seemed, not to mention the COSTS involved in managing multiple sites. I found Amanda of Girls Guide to Web Design online, and decided, once again, to go the DIY route. I have learned SO much…everything from A to B to Z was laid out in an easy-to-follow program, and I couldn’t be happier! I highly recommended it for those who want to manage their own sites!!
I enrolled in the Girls Guide to Web Design course. I’m really enjoying the process of building my own site with Amanda’s easy to follow, very informative, guidance!!
I’ve worked for my parents in the family printshop almost all of my life; designing, printing, packaging, delivering, basically helping out with whatever needed to get done. 4 years ago they finally decided to create a website for their business and they put me in charge of site design and organization. I graduated from college with a degree in Education and learned graphic design on my own, so with absolutely NO EXPERIENCE in website development, I had no clue how to build a stand-alone site and didn’t know where to begin.
So I put together an inspiration board with the specific elements our website should include and called a website designer to help us out. What a nightmare! Every time my parents wanted to change a background color or switch a few words around, they’d tell me, I’d have to call our designer and let him know about the changes, wait a week or so for him to get back to us, and continue this game of telephone between the 4 of us until the minor tweaks were finally fixed.
I really wish I could have helped my parents more. If only I had known how to code! We eventually switched from a completely custom website to a company that offered limited designs with only content customization because they designed a backdoor into the site management where I could login and make these small changes.
When I started my own business and was ready to take my website design from a napkin sketch to the internet, I knew that I absolutely wanted a custom site and would never want to rely on a website designer again! So I had to learn how to code.
I don’t even remember how it happened or how I came across the site, but coincidentally, shortly after I decided that I was ready to learn, I found the Girls Guide to Web Design.
I saved my money, bought the Jetsetter Edition (which is Ah-mazing!) and have loved learning, designing and coding ever since! What I love best about the course, is that I can learn at my own pace. I have 2 year old twin boys that keep me busy during the day and I’m a night owl anyway, so having access to the classes at all times, in addition to technical (and emotional) support online from Amanda and the fellow Jetsetters, has helped me tremendously!
I won’t say that learning to code has been easy (at least, not for me. I’m more right-brained!), but it really has been fun and not nearly as impossible as I once thought, or know it would have been if I hadn’t found GG2WB!
A few years ago I hired a web designer to put together the site graphics, banners, and join buttons. All I gave them was the copy, a few testimonials and the price points.
It was also the first time I had outsourced anything.
My delight was found in the fact they communicated everyday by email to share progress. Then, when it was completed… I was delighted again by the results. Their work was splendid.