Web designers

I began my venture with an up and coming web designer. I was totally disappointed with the process. I exchanged services for his web design and felt guilty when approaching him with modifications because I didn't want him to exhaust man hours on something I didn't really pay for. I ended up dropping him and building my own site because I was driving back and forth to drop off usb devices at his apartment and making phone calls to have changes done. I just felt like I was working more than I would if I would have just done it myself. Now, he has really made quite a name for himself where I used to live. He has brought on quite a few more clients and has really increased his skills.

I sent out a shout on Facebook a couple days ago for friends of mine to give me feedback on my Website. I didn't even think I was friends with him on Facebook, but this is what I found in my inbox.

"Whitney, Long time no talk. I feel bad about your website like I let you down a bit with it. I read you were trying to improve it and I would like to help you out. Instead of paying money all I would ask is for you to paint my logo on your face or something creative and let me use it on my site for a creative side. The site can be flash, wordpress or whatever and it will be top of the line. I have come a long way since working on yours, just check out my new site www.joshuawebdesign.com. Once again, I am sorry and hope this offer can help you achieve your goal and dream. Even if you don't want to do the logo paint for me I will still help you out. Thanks!

Jacksonville Website Designer. Full service professional custom website design in Jacksonville FL.
www.joshuawebdesign.com
Affordable full service custom website design services for Jacksonville FL and nationwide. Custom and unique websites available as low as $100."

He was a really pleasant guy when I worked with him before. He is a young guy with a young family and trying to start his own business to eventually allow him to quit his full time job. I did a party for his two adorable little girls in exchange for his services. They didn't know people in Jacksonville, so it was just me and him and his wife sitting in a circle playing with the girls and doing little paints on their arms and legs. They were shy so Mommy and Daddy had to go first.

Here are my concerns and I'm wondering if anyone has had experience in this area.

1. I'm quirky and have high expectations.
2. My work is changing on a weekly basis and my website is updated that frequently.
3. I would love to have a more professional looking site with a logo and a better flow.
4. I not completely happy with what I have now, but have excepted it because I'm a fish out of water when it comes to web design, but have improved greatly in the last year.

Have any of you had good or bad experiences with using a designer and why or why not would you use one again?

Oh and check out his page and tell me if you think he really has much to add to what I've already done.

Thanks Guys!

I don't personally see the value of a webs designer for very small businesses such as ours, but if it is something that you are genuinely considering, then I would suggest talking to him about your concerns.... that you need to be able to update certain aspects yourself and often (and a wordpress blog might not be what you are after), that you felt bad about nit picking things when you weren't paying for the site... see what he says? He might be able to set up the basic website and show you how to make the kinds of changes that you want to do frequently?

I actually really like your site ... the only thing that I would probably change about it is adding a footer to each page with your phone number and/or another link to the contact page, but that's jmho. Too many fancy graphics and animations can take forever to load and possibly even freeze up someone's computer if they have an older one.

Hey Perry, you mentioned not needing a web designer for small businesses like ours, but would you feel the same way when knowing that I really intend to build my business more towards the fine arts arena? Being able to interest major corporate advertisement campaigns, billboards, commercials, that sort of thing. I really want this to be a Monday through Friday deal for me. Or do you think what I have would do just fine?

I had the same fears as you hiring a web designer. I checked out the free web building sites and wasn't terribly impressed when it wouldn't connect to my already purchased domain name.
I wanted to be able to update it often as when I was setting it up I was till new and didn't know exactly what I wanted but recognised exactly what I didn't want.
My husband downloaded a version of dreamweaver and sat down to work it all out. Whenever he encountered something he didn't quite understand ( like Meta tags) he looked it up on Google and got the answers he needed.
So he built it from scratch and for someone that works in construction - it safe to say I am very proud of him!
Funny enough I still have the problem of asking him to do all the updates for me .... I feel like I'm hasseling him and he gets nothing out of the hours he spends mucking about with it.... so my next challenge it to understand the basics so I can at least change photo's out when i want to.
** I would get in contact with the guy and ask him if he can help build on what you have already created. If he can't and want's to start from scratch then I wouldn't bother - it really is a lot of work, and can sometimes be hard to convey exactly what you want and end up getting what they think you should have instead of what you wanted.
You site looks good. Did you use a free web design site or...?
the reason I ask is because in my experience it can be harder to make a site that has been created using one of those free site building sites show up on Google searches..... I hope that made sense.
If someone builds it for you from scratch the usually embed all the tags and key words so it speaks to Google for you and you show up on search engines ( if they know what they are doing)....
The free ones can take awhile to load too because you have to be fed through another site first..... that said your website loaded fine, usual speed for my puter but I have notoriously bad wirelss internet so I would not be the one to judge loading speed.
Maybe if you explain to the web guy - you dont want to start again and you want to have control he will suggest a few ways in which he can still help you.
srry so long.

it only takes a little bit of html knowledge to put the tags on a site, but then, I don't use templates either....

As far as attracting corporate stuff, I don't know if the caliber of your website is really what they care about? I don't know a lot about it, but I think those are more a case of your portfolio and references... it's more about who you know. I understand that in your case, you wouldn't be paying for it, but for the usual small business starting out, you could easily bankrupt yourself on that kind of extensive marketing before the work is really flowing already.

Thanks for the input guys. I guess I'm just going to have to get into contact with him and really see what he feels comfortable doing in very specific terms. And Tash, I like your idea. If he were able to add small things to what I already have that I have complete access to change, I would feel a lot more comfortable. My website is a template, but I totally customized it. If you saw the template and my website side by side, you wouldn't even know that's where it came from. I used webstarts.com and have been way happier with them than some of the other providers. My subscription runs out next month though so I have to get this figured out soon!

Personally, I don't think "we" need to pay web designers either.

I used Yahoo Small Business and their PageBuilder templates to do mine by myself. I have complete control and can update online from any computer, anywhere, when I need/want to.

I'm not into fancy, animation, flash, interactive calendars, or paypal, etc. so what I have suits me.

I would not in any circumstances want to deal with someone else having to do my updating, changing photos, etc. The frustration would be too much for me!

And as far as learning to update existing sites - try checking out local community calendars/evening classes for html courses, etc. Doesn't take much to figure out the basics.

Wow! I am digging the logo! Are you kidding me? 5 minutes? If I stick with doing it myself, I'm defiantly going to be e-mailing you about the logo. I am really, really, really debating this. It seems like an opportunity to get something people pay a lot of money for and all I have to do is a simple exchange of services. Ten years from now, I'm hoping my small business won't be so small and if that's the case, it would be nice to get in with him now when it's cheap. You know? I've got to keep thinking...

Ok and something else for someone who is super bored and looking for something to do, I'd like to change my domain to something easier to remember, that ends in .com. This is proving to be very difficult since I share my name with an olympian and a grammy winner. So if your bored, another perspective is sometimes helpful. And it doesn't need to be event services. That's something I did when I was still doing event planning. I hate it and won't be going back to it so something more artsy would be better. And remember I'm trying to appeal more to weekday work so birthday and party stuff really won't be beneficial.

nobody seems to have wmbodyart.com ?

I don't think I'd like working with a web designer either. My site would definitely look nicer, but I really enjoy the ability to change things whenever I want, and immediately. I can come home and add a picture or change my rates in 5 minutes, where with a designer doing it I would have to mail it to him or take it by, explain where I wanted it, and then wait for him to do it, and then maybe not really like how it was done. I'm really picky about stuff like that. Most artists probably are, now that I think about it. LOL.

I'd just honestly tell him that you are constantly making changes to your website and it would be best if you had the ability to update it yourself. I'm sure he'll understand that.

Perry that's what I keep coming up with too!

Let's take a vote...
Who thinks www.wmbodyart.com is easy to remember?

Whitney, thats def easy to remember. I like it