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Technology Web Design: 10 Mistakes You Should Not Do While Hiring a Technology Website Designer for your projects.

Technology Web Design: 10 Mistakes

You Should Not Do While Hiring a Technology Website Designer

Technology company websites carry a huge burden.  They need a website that’s not just a showcase for the firm’s products and services, but it must also be a great example of tech at work. 

A well-designed website is essential to your own organization, right from the sales and marketing department, all the way up to the C-suite. Technology web design is a whole different ball game. 

Customers, visitors, and even your competitors expect your website to be tech-intensive, jam-packed with features, memorable, a great UX, designed to attract and retain attention, and to create a buzz on social media. 

Design Must-Haves For Technology Websites

While every tech business has its own unique set of products and services, there are certain common design elements that their websites must have:

1. A Strong “About Us” Page: It’s important for visitors/customers to understand what exactly your company does. The About Us or Who We Are pages are the space where you get to explain, inform and educate about your company, a bit about its history and background, something about the team, and your goals, objectives, and vision.

2. Other important pages: Inner pages must have strong key content that showcases your offerings. A privacy policy page, Captcha/Anti-Spam feature, Contact Us, FAQ, blog, social media buttons, side-bar with news/press-release and latest information, home-page sliders, and a sufficient number of landing pages for each customer/visitor segment.

3. Easy Navigation: Most customers/visitors to tech websites are there to look for specific information. They value swift loading speeds, logical sequencing of pages, clear CTA buttons, a rich and informative resource center, and clearly organized tech information.

4. Security: Ensure the latest security features, so that from the time the visitor enters to the time they leave, all the data is encrypted.

10 Mistakes To Avoid While Hiring A Tech Website Designer

1. Scope of Project: Not knowing the scope of your project can be a huge mistake while hiring a designer. Every website design and development project is different. If you’re unsure about the role of your website in your marketing strategy, it’s important to analyze it along with your team, before you hire the designer.

If you already have an existing website. Do you want a design refresh/refurbishment or to build a completely new site altogether? It’s also important to evaluate whether this is a simple project that involves adding features and upgrades, or whether it’s a complex one that involves cloud hosting services, social media integration, etc.

2. Not checking for relevant skills: When you view a potential candidate as a designer for your tech website, obviously you would go through their portfolio. But do you check for the right skills and experience? Apart from education, training and certifications, it’s important to know whether they have skills with:

basic HTML/CSS

interactive, responsive design

back and front end design

experience in customer journey mapping

UX/UI design 

can provide clear information architecture

communication skills

3. Hiring In A Hurry: Don’t wait till the last moment before starting the hiring process. Give yourself and your team enough time to put down your specific requirements. Collect references and recommendations from trustworthy sources, talk to your peers, and look at competitor websites to get a feel of the prevailing trends. Go through the portfolio in detail and don’t get taken in by glossy brochures or screenshots. Instead, ask to view real-time websites that they have worked on and speak to former clients. Look at reviews and feedback on professional sites and finally trust your instincts.

4. Check about Support and Maintenance: Your website is not a product that you simply buy off the shelf. It is an ongoing work in progress that needs constant improvement in performance, integration of new features and tech, troubleshooting, support, and maintenance. You also need accurate and reliable analytics and reporting.

Check if your designer can provide these facilities either as part of a package, or an after-sales support system. It’s risky to hire a designer without firming up on these aspects. One way to verify whether they do provide these features is to read customer testimonials, feedback on review websites, and to talk to former clients.

5. Pricing: While it’s important to keep your budget firmly in view while hiring, it’s a big mistake to make pricing the main reason to hire. Cheap rates can cost you big money in the long run, they may come with small print. That ties you up, corners may be cut, or there’s no support after launch. On the other hand, don’t pay too much for a custom-built site because you’re dazzled by big names, we speak, tech jargon, and figure-juggling.

6. SEO capability: Search engines have sophisticated algorithms that crawl for long-tailed content, relevance, loading speeds, mobile responsiveness, strong links, and original, fresh and authoritative content. They also look for higher levels of social media engagement. Ensure that the designer you hire has a proven track record in leveraging state of the art SEO.

7. Mobile responsiveness: Studies show that a poor mobile UX causes more than 40% of website visitors to move to a competitor’s website. If your website is badly designed for the mobile experience, more than 50% of users won’t recommend your website (or possibly your business) to their social circle. Ensure consistency across multiple channels for maximum results and make sure that your designer is on-board with this.

8. Analytics: It’s a mistake to hire a designer who may not value the importance of analytics on a tech website. The analytics codes must be incorporated at the design. Stage to track visitors and traffic, bounce rates, behavioral data, and website performance analytics.

9. Security: A 2017 study came up with an alarming statistic – more than 33 million websites were hacked globally. Visitors and clients are much more aware of the need for reliable and consistent security today. Nearly 90% of users tend to abandon buying if they feel their data is not secure or there’s no SSL certificate.  Additionally, secure HTTPS websites load much faster and they could rank higher on search engines. If your designer is not familiar with the latest security features, avoid hiring them.

10. Not in Sync with Your Business: Sure, there are thousands of highly talented and creative designers out there. But you need to hire the one that’s aligned with your business requirements. The right blend of creativity and professionalism is needed here.

You can get a feel of the designer’s work when you look at their portfolio. If there are too many, too early and annoying pop-ups, videos and audios. That autoplay, lack of a zoom feature on the mobile site to read tiny text, jam-packing with ads, slow loading-speeds, etc. These are elements that have to be evaluated for relevance and professionalism.