Website Design - How To Hire The Right Website Designer For Your International Audience

If you are developing a new website for an international audience you need to follow the same best practice guidelines as you would if you were creating a domestic website.

You need to develop a website to appeal to your foreign visitors.

Website design is a very important. Hiring a good website designer is a good idea.

Unfortunately, anyone can claim to be a web developer or graphic artist. It is not easy to choose the right help. You have to check their credentials and possibly contact their previous clients.

And for a website for an international audience your website designer must also be open to working with you are cultural communication checklists.

Basic Guidelines For Hiring The Right Website Designer

First, here are the basic guidelines for hiring a website designer:

Determine Your Needs

You need to decide what you want from your website.

Begin by figuring out who your target audience is. What your target audience needs and what they would like to see on your website. Build your website for your target audience.

Here is an extreme example:

Do you like website with flashy graphics that move, with the latest Acid Jazz music starting to play immediately, set on loud and with a hard to find “stop the noise” button?

What if your market is different in your target country? The demographics may be totally different. Would your foreign visitors also like this look and feel or would they will leave as soon as then can hit the backspace.

Remember to examine any audios you have on your website. Different cultures have different tastes in music.

There are some other needs to look into.

• Can you afford the budget to maintain a big website?
• Can you run your business on static pages, or do you need a blog?
• Is a membership site right for you, do you need a CMS tool?

You should know the answers to these questions and any other specific needs before you start the hiring process.

Find Your Website Designer

Once you know what you need, start looking for a website designer.

If you don’t know how to hire a website designer, there are two ways.

• You can contact the owner of a site that you like and ask for their website designer, and if your site is not competition there is not reason you won’t get a name.
• Referrals are the second option. Contact people who have been through the same process.

Remember you will not need to have the best website designer.

But you do need one who will do the job, meet deadlines, stay in the defined budget and leave you happy enough with the results that you will tell people “my website was designed by…”.

For an international website design it also helps tremendously to have someone you can work with to go through all of the possible cultural communication checklists.

Create Your Website For The Right Search Engines

The art of captivating Mr. Google and Mr. Yahoo! is a challenging, but fun, task.

You might think you will also need to captivate a foreign search engine.

Most of the leading foreign search engines use Google algorithms. If the leading search engines in your target country do not use the Google algorithms, then look for a website designer with experience in your target country.

Research Your Designer’s Website

When you begin your research on the potential service provider the most important thing to do is to look at their website and see if you like it.

Check For International Experience

Has your website designer worked on international projects?

This may or may not be a determining factor. It depends on how big a cultural gap there is. Keep this question in mind particularly if you are hiring a local service provider.

You might be able to work with someone in your target county. This can be a great solution… if you communicate well between the two of you. Look into this solution if there are no major language barriers between you and the website designer.

Pay Attention To The Loading Speed

If you don’t like the website designers own website because it loads slowly or is hard to navigate, move on.

Make sure all the images are present and make sure that there are no pages you can’t access. A website designer that has even one page with a 404 message “Oops, that page can’t be found” is one to be wary of.

If he passes these first two tests then take the time to view as many pages as you can.

Find The Site Map

The sitemap is probably the second most important page you will have.

If you find your website designers sitemap easily, the search engines find it easily too.

Go to the pages with the fine print. See if they have a site map which will sometimes appear as a file called “sitemap.xml.”

If you can’t find it easily, the search engines may not easily find yours.

Glance At The Company Info

It can also be useful to read the information about the company, or people, to make sure they have a good technical background.

But keep Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in mind. Not having the right degree does not mean someone lacks experience or ability.

Take note of any international backgrounds and experience.

Match Your Audience To The Portfolio

Most website designers will have a portfolio on their home page.

It is important to like what you see.

It is more important for your foreign audience to like what you see.

Remember, the demographics of your international audience may be very different to those of your domestic audience.

• If your international audience is much older then moving graphics may be too much of a bother for them.
• If your international audience is more design oriented, use the latest and the greatest in graphic design.

Identify Your Designer

When you find something that you really like, make sure that the same designers are still in the company.

It is not unheard of for a company to profile the best work they have, even if the workers have all changed.

This is true in every industry, not just website design.

Hire The Right Web Designer For Your International Website

A website designed for international audiences sometimes need a little extra preparation. You need to identify a design appropriate for an audience you may not know very well, or not well enough.

Mistakes are easy to make in cross cultural communication.

Use this basic guideline above to help you. You do not want your investment in website design to work against you in your target markets.

Depending on your budget and the total investment in your website you should:

• Work with a cultural marketing or communication expert
• Ask for someone with a good background in the cultural communication concerned to review your website
• Start small, rely on good website design practices, and only invest in inexpensive logos - preferably from a logo service provider with most of his clients from abroad, like 19 Dollar Logos based in Serbia.
• If you cannot afford any of the above, study good international internet marketing and cross cultural communication… and invest in the right website design so as soon as you can.

A website designed for your international audiences will bring you more business.