First, let me say this post is not intended as a shameless plug for Dirt Road Media. We do offer web design services, but by no means are we the best there is. Lately, though, if I’ve heard this once, I’ve heard it a thousand times, “I hired my neighbor’s second cousin’s friend, who just graduated from high school to design my site. He’s gonna be a mechanic, but he loves computers, and he gave me a great deal.”

Are you kidding me? You probably wouldn’t ask Joe the plumper to submit your taxes to the IRS. Even if he can, he doesn’t do it for a living. He fixes leaky pipes and clogged toilets. Clearly, the project and its importance are keys in your decision. So why would the virtual home for your business be any different?

Nearly every time I view “someone I know built mine” websites I notice red flags that indicate the person was not a professional. The sales pitch a person uses is another a clue.

What follows is a list compiled by David Walsh, co-founder of MooTools, a web coding application. If any of these things spew from the mouth of your so-called web designer, Walsh says run. I say fast.

Any web guy who calls himself a “webmaster” probably isn’t a master of anything. The term “webmaster” has become geek speak for the word “amateur.” The web has diversified into so many realms that webmaster is no longer meaningful.

Submitting your website to hundreds of search engines would be great — 10 years ago. Relevant search engines index web sites based on content and keywords. Search engine optimization is big business and submitting sites to search engines simply isn’t the way to get to the top of Google.

Your business needs someone who’s been there before. The most common answer to my “Who was he and what business did he work for?” question is “Oh, he did a website for the CEO’s daughter’s [insert lame organization here].” I hear that friend-of-a-friend story all the time. Choose someone with a sizable portfolio that can provide references.

Translation: “I can spend dozens of hours wasting your money to create something that will take too long to load and will be skipped more times than dessert at a bad restaurant.” Consistency and website flow are important to web design, not meaningless animations that waste visitors’ time and your money.

You’ll add an ugly relic of the early Internet on my site so that my competitors have an idea of my web stats? Sweet!
Counters make a website look so yesterday. Don’t use them.

Any real web developer knows that he doesn’t make the rules. Follow standards in the initial build and then fix it in Internet Explorer. That’s the flow. No responsible programmer would place a “best if view in…” message on the front-end of a website.

Bottom Line:

Your website will be competing with hundreds of thousands or millions of websites for the same customer. Ugly, inconvenient and hard to navigate won’t cut it. A bad website will cost you far more money through lost sales than what a professionally designed site would have cost to begin with.

Bottom line: free ain’t cheap.