How do you go about hiring a web designer? How much would you expect to pay roughly? What if the design fails to impress potential users?

When I was looking for a designer, I called many firms. The end result - expect to pay 5k-10k for a small site (~10 pages). This was outside my budget....

So then I tried craigslist. I received a lot of interest, but found only one good candidate. But this candidate found another contract before I could get back to them. Craigslist is cool for simpler things like company logos, but didn't work for me on the web designer front.

So, I contacted a prof who taught a project course at a design school (university) in my area. I asked this professor to ask his best student to contact me. I looked over the student's portfolio and was really impressed. This design student turned out very good work for a very reasonable price.

How do you go about hiring a web designer?

Past custom references, portfolio and most importantly designer's overall attitude.

How much would you expect to pay roughly?

Too vague to answer...really depends on WHAT exactly you've hired the designer to do. Is it to take a detailed concept YOU give him and convert it into a design(cheap)? Is it to THINK through your technical product, think how users will use it, then design(more work)?

What if the design fails to impress potential users?

I don't know any designer who will guarantee that your users will like the design so this one is tough.

-Zaid

Here is a good blog post I read some time ago about how this company chose their designer:

http://www.barenakedapp.com/the-team/how-we-picked-the-designer

Figuring out the best designer for your site is, generally, more art than science. Just like choosing a developer. One thing you can do to reduce your risk is to hire someone for a small task first (say, do the logo), and if you like their work, ask them to do the whole project.

Hire a designer who has more than a few years experience and it able to deliver not only the Photoshop files but the front-end (standards-compliant code!) to you as well. This means this person is able to code by hand and will understand the implications of his/her design choices when it comes to developing the actual website. Also, you get kind of a "two fer" this way as you don't need to hire a second person to do the front-end code. Another advantage is the capable designer can better communicate with the back-end team.

Pay this person well as you get what you pay for. Web design like many other disciplines in the web field, is a highly lucrative job with new opportunities coming along everyday. It's important for the survival of your own company to make sure you make the hotshot you hired feel satisfied with the salary and your company.

However, if you are just looking for a junior person on the cheap, you can find that but then you get junior, cheap results. It's better to bring in junior people to work under your senior person and build him/her into a senior from there.

An un-holy amount will charge out the ass. Many have few clients, so their business model depends on charging each client alot, almost scamming them.

Web design is not rocket science. With all the tools and stuff available to designers today, there is no reason the "clothes" of a site should ever go over a few ,000'.

Don't pay 20-30k. Leave that for big/unsophisticated companies.

p.s. A lot of designers do suck. With developers, many can get the task done "eventually", but with designers, many can't get what you want... ever.

I like this designer and he's very friendly. http://www.eoghanmccabe.com/