If you’ve decided to hire a website designer for your animation website, it’s essential to hire the best designer. A well-designed website can help you promote your animation services, establish a robust online presence, and get more clients.
However, some businesses and employers don’t know where to hire, whom to hire, and how to hire. In the end, they are disappointed at the result of their poorly designed websites that bring little to no results.
In this blog post, we list down the top 8 mistakes of hiring an animation website designer.
1) Not Checking Their Portfolio
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To create a website that will guarantee maximum results, a designer needs to have significant design experience and be knowledgeable about animation software and trends.
However, a designer’s worth is in their work, not merely their certificates or titles. According to Medium, many employers make the mistake of going through a designer’s CV and hiring them according to how qualified they appear on paper.
Make sure to go through not only your potential designer’s CV but also their portfolio. Ask them about the companies they worked for previously, how many clients they have had, and what their experience was like with those clients.
You should also do a background check by visiting their LinkedIn and Upwork profiles and checking out their testimonials and ratings.
2) Not Knowing the Difference Between a Designer and a Developer
Some people use the terms “designer” and “developer” interchangeably since they both have a common goal of creating appealing websites that function flawlessly. However, they differ in some ways.
Designers are artists and mostly concerned with the website’s design and aesthetics and keeping up with the latest website trends. For example, they’re concerned with how your brand logo and colors look when combined with other design elements.
Meanwhile, website developers create the back-end of your website and write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. They focus on functionality and compatibility.
You may have to hire two different people in some cases: one for designing and one for coding. You can also choose to hire a User Experience designer who focuses on giving your customers a great user experience.
3) Lack of Communication With Your Designer
A successful website doesn’t only depend on your website designer; it also depends on you. After all, your website is the culmination of the needs of your businesses, your clients, and the design expertise of your website designer.
Your designer’s job is to make the website for you, but it’s your job to convey to your designer exactly what you want for your website.
You’ll need to communicate clearly to your designer about your website’s purpose, what goals you want to achieve, what kind of audience you want to reach, what content you’d like to see on your website, and other details that will come up.
If you work closely with your web designer, you will save time, money, and effort. At the same time, you will create a website that’s appealing and bring in more clients.
4) Paying Too Little
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If you want a high-quality animation website, you have to budget for a high-quality designer.
Xtendly points out, your website is your most significant online advertisement, and your website’s quality shows the quality of your animation services.
It’s normal to have a tight budget and seek out lower costs, especially if you’re just starting as a freelance animator. However, if you want a well-designed website that will drive traffic and show the world what you have to offer, you need to pay a talented designer the money they deserve.
5) Paying Too Much
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That being said, paying your designer too much can be just as detrimental as paying them too little. Shelling out major money on a website designer does not always mean you’ll end up with a great website. To counter this issue, you can pay your designer in small increments throughout the design process.
There are many people and companies who have hired expensive designers for their websites and still ended up with less-than-stellar results. Issues like complicated navigation and a site that’s constantly crashing are not out of the question just because your designer’s hourly rate was high.
6) Not Paying Attention to SEO
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Search Engine Optimization helps people find your website from search engine results. It brings traffic to your website for free if you optimize it correctly and target your content targeted to your ideal audience.
SEO takes many factors into account, such as keywords, content and loading speed. You should hire a website designer who has experience using SEO and will put that knowledge into practice for your website design.
Paying attention to SEO is a strategy you should use in creating your website. There’s no point in having a great website design if no one will be able to find it and know what you offer.
7) Not Considering Website Maintenance
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You may have your animation website designer finish designing your website, but it will assuredly need regular updating and maintenance to keep running properly. Some content may even be added or removed from your website in the future, depending on your freelance animation business’ progress.
Fingerprint Marketing says that you should think of your website as a car. No matter how pretty or expensive your website is, it needs to be maintained from time to time.
According to iBrand Studio, you should make sure your designer will guide you on how to edit the content after the website design is completed. You can also ask your designer to maintain your website regularly.
The fee you will pay your designer for maintenance can be based on a package or hourly rate. This is something you will want to bring up with your designer. Ideally, the designer who created your website will also be the one to maintain it because they know the website best.
8) Not Checking the Quality of Your Website Designer’s Work
Never assume that your website designer will do a perfect job of designing your website.
They might overlook some elements in designing your animation website, such as misplaced headers, janky buttons, and missing pages. Leaving out these small details might drive traffic, and future clients, away from your page.
Off the Lip suggests that you go over your list of deliverables vs. the actual deliverables, admin page, Google Analytics, page speed, etc. before you finish paying your website designer. If you notice something is missing or not working on your website, don’t hesitate to call your designer about it.
In Summary
Be careful about how you go about hiring and working with a website designer to design your animation website.
You can have a great website design that will bring maximum results as long as you check your designer’s portfolio, pay the right amount, maintain your website, and clearly communicate your website goals with your website designer.
Keep the points we mentioned above in mind, though, and you will be more likely to make good decisions for your website and get the results you want.
If you’re interested in learning more about the business side of animation, download a copy of our free marketing handbook and sign up for our free masterclass.
