Web Design Leeds - Northern Web - Testing a web designer's skills

How tough's your metal? Points to consider when hiring a web designer

If you are in the position of hiring a web designer for a permanent role or even a one-off job, it's a good idea to know what to look for when weighing up the abilities of your candidates. After all, the web design tag carries with it a lot more than most people realise, and all too often it’s the hobbyists that slip through the net.

Web design in 2009 encompasses a lot more than just creating a nice design. At base level, your chosen candidate should possess knowledge of the following:

Creating clean, valid mark-up that doesn’t buckle under pressure; whether that pressure comes from W3C tests or non-standard browsers. Adhering to modern web standards is very important, and your candidate's portfolio site at the very least should validate to transitional standards.
An understanding of usability. To understand how people use a website is to improve lead and sale generation, whilst at the same time improving the user experience. User Experience design is a job in itself (literally) but a basic understanding of the principals behind usability design is important.
Dynamic content. Again, designers are tasked with making things look nice, but you need to be pro-active where dynamic content is concerned and, where possible have a good idea of what's going on. For example, expect to design pages that you didn’t think you would have to, such as contact forms and shopping baskets, and style error messages you would never have expected to see.
Planning. Following on from the previous point, good designers put planning into practice before they dive in head first to a project. This makes sense down the line when you’re faced with unexpected issues.
Basic SEO understanding. Arguably integrating SEO into a website is just adhering to good design practice, because a lot of on-site SEO is catered for by creating valid mark-up and ensuring document flow is correct. Expect good candidates to use the heading tags, write descriptive page titles and include some footer links.

There are, of course, rules that you as an employer need to listen to also. Don’t expect your designer to be good at everything; extract their strengths and challenge them on this. Ensuring good communication is essential to delivering a quality end product, and this is in the hands of both the designer and the manager.

testing a web designer's skill set

How tough's your metal? Points to consider when hiring a web designer