What to Look for in a (Web) Designer: Uncovering the Charlatans
The following article was witten and published by William Szilveszter.
Every 3rd rate designer, charlatan, scam artist, and wannabe is going to tote about W3C valid code, high usability, and SEO, yet few will probably deliver on their claims. After all, most of their clients probably won’t have any clue they’re getting everything they paid for. These smarmy “designers” will probably flaunt their online portfolio, chalk full of cherry picked work that exemplifies their phenomenal skills and abilities—some may be truly inspirational. In fact, a well put together site from these unscrupulous individuals may look downright appealing, almost too good to pass up. But is it all smoke and mirrors? Are they truly legit artists that are going to provide bang for your buck?
Find out with a little bit of investigating. Just 15 minutes of digging can save you loads of cash, time, and ultimately your sanity.
Coding Standards
First off, check their code. First thing I do when I visit a competitor that claims valid code is to put their own website to the test. If they aren’t taking the time to implement proper, valid code into their own website, then there is a good chance, they won’t do it for you either. After all, any good designer will use their own personal website as a testcase—a practice arena to hone and fine tune their skills. You can do this by seeing if their website validates.
Visit the W3C Markup Validation Service, a free service provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C is responsible for making the internet into a coherent and usable place. They have outlined and set forth countless guidelines so that ultimately web pages show up exactly how they are intended to, regardless of what kind of browser or operating system a visitor is using. If you’ve ever been to a website that said it didn’t support your browser or was broken beyond repair, you will appreciate their vital service.
By visiting the W3C validator, and entering a designer’s website address, you can see if they meet the requirements, and indeed have a valid website. Note that entering www.szilveszter.ca, for example, only tests that single page, and may not give you an accurate account of the entire website. But it’s a good start. If their home page validates, you can always dig deeper (and probably should at least test a few of them), but if it doesn’t, well, chances are none will, and you can just move on.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Another way is to check the code itself. This really applies to SEO over valid coding, but since that is actually a huge deal these days (and they are really intertwined), it’s something to be mindful of if you contract a web designer (especially one that totes: SEO).
Simply right click on an empty portion of their page, and select “View Source” (or equivalent) from the menu. You’ll be greeted with a new window full of code. Don’t worry if you have no idea what you’re looking at, that’s not important. What you should be focusing on is the meta stuff (metadata is essentially the data of data, like dimensions, file size, and colorspace of a jpeg, for example). Things like “description”, “keywords” and “title”. Below is an excerpt from a working designer from my local area (I have a client that has dealt with this so-called expert in the past—the word “nightmare” was used without restraint).
<meta name="description" content="This is where you add the website description." />
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords, for the site, go here, separated, by commas" />
She obviously didn’t even code the website herself. Some “experienced designer.” Looking at the footer shows exactly where she got it from:
<!-- <div id="footer"> <a href="https://www.coffeecup.com/store/themes/">Web Templates by CoffeeCup Software</a> -->
While she changed the home page description and keyword tags, she failed to do so on the other pages. Sloppy and stupid—nice combination. Would you feel you’re getting your money’s worth? I know I wouldn’t. Ideally, you want a designer to design around your personal needs, and not use some “cookie-cutter” design. I may seem overly harsh towards this person, but I know she has inflated her prices, downright robbed clients through exorbitant fees, and has unlawfully accessed her client’s email accounts (for starters). Truth be told, she is the direct inspiration for this article.
What you are looking here is the basics. If fields are missing, that’s a good sign they aren’t optimizing for search engines. Looking deeper requires knowledge in the area of SEO, but at least you can find flagrant violators.
Affiliates
The next thing to look for are the affiliate links. Many charlatan’s claim they have worked with high profile companies. Big names like IBM, Microsoft, Sony, Apple, or Fox. But what proof do they have? Other than a link and their word, do they present any evidence of their high profile contract, or the work they did for these Fortune 500 companies? Obviously a little bit of common sense will get you a long way, but it’s always nice to see concrete work that was done. A link to a live website. Some example of the work that are readily available to those that use the product. If you claim you’ve done the interface for xyz, then I should see it in action when I install the program.
And this gets me to my next point: See their work, live. Most of these unscrupulous individuals show fancy portfolios, but none of them link to the live website. I perused a local design firm that showed a lot of classy stuff. I thought they were inspirational, until I tried to visit one of their client’s websites. There was no direct link, so being the sleuth that I am, I uncovered the address through Google. When I went there, I noticed all the links pointed back to the design firm. What this company did was purchase an entirely difference domain name, create a home page, subsequently linking everything back to their own wesbite
Here is the entry in their online portfolio. And now the address for Landscaping Victoria, their so-called client.
Things look kosher right? Click a link on Landscaping Victoria. Wait what? Yep. It heads right back to the design firm. They have artificially inflated their portfolio and their listing on search engines. Smarmy.
In Closing
Keeping these small things in mind can lead you to filter out many of the assholes that make things difficult for qualified designers that take the time to fully deliver what they promise. When every website claims the same thing, it can be maddening finding a legitimate designer to contract and provide you with quality work.
I really appreciate the time you’re taking guiding the masses through the “valley of digital darkness”. It’s quite sad to see hard-working designers being overshadowed by flashy bunco artists. Unfortunately the majority of clients can’t make the difference, give them cheap eye candy and slap around big words that most people don’t understand here and there and you’re good to go.
I agree Christophe. I’d like to say that most of the offenders are “design firms” or these low budget shops that tote they are a business, with a wing of employees at their disposal, but I find that even some freelance designers are guilty of being overly shady. I recently signed a new client and she had horror stories for days on her prior relationship with a designer. I chuckled when I perused this designer’s website and she had not only used some template machine, but toted about HTML5 and CSS3, like those are even remotely viable standards to deal in. I’m guilty of using some CSS3, but I wouldn’t go around telling customers that I code in such things. Let’s face it, CSS3 is still in draft and while most modern browser support them (even IE7), they are not something I would trust to return a good ROI for my clients.
Sadly, you are right. Most people probably won’t be able to distinguish legitimate from lofty, but hopefully I can help them reject those that are overly brash about their cheating ways
Designers that take pride in their work and are ultimately in this business because it is their “calling” shouldn’t have to struggle against those that want to turn a quick buck and have no moral qualms about using “any means necessary.”