Freelance designers are high in demand today. Their expertise is much coveted, especially by start-up companies and small business owners, as the perception is that they're more efficient and don't cost too much. Partnering with outsourced web development enables both parties to get the work done quickly within limited budgets and quick turn-around times.

Good development partners are not always easy to find. You will come across stories of failed web development projects because hired developers or designers were not able to fulfill their assignments in time for launch. When this happens, it's both a loss on the website owner (company or business) and on the development team.

If you are the one providing web design services to clients, you know it’s critical to meet expectations in order to keep them as clients.

Looking for a developer with these qualities will help you to fully enjoy the flexibility and increase your earning potential:

(1) Customer-oriented

As a design professional, you know the art and science of customer service. Your development company should be the same.  

(2) Looking at Function AND Form

Websites today have to be both functional website and nice looking. There's always a way to update and spruce the appearance of a website; while a messy and slow-loading site is more difficult to fix if left for later. If you're a designer who puts design first and form second, you may experience the consequences once a client complains.

It's best to focus on both form and function. Working with a development team can help you to do that.

(3) Familiar with the Client's Industry

A designer who succeeds with every project takes the time to understand the client's industry. This knowledge will help you to understand the elements required and should be included in the website's design. A well-versed development team knows what the industry needs in terms of appearance, function and features.

(4) Creative and With Good Imagination

Creativity is at the heart of a website designer's goals and success. This doesn't end in the appearance of a client's website, but in the proper execution of your client’s ideas. Sometimes, you’re put in a position to weigh how to implement your ideas against the functionality of the site.  Good developers can suggest options to make the website more appealing and useful to all end-users.

(5) Values Site Usability

As a designer, understanding how to implement usability on every site is important. Jakob Nielsen's design principles help designers avoid common design errors; thus, helping you and your clients save money and headaches in the long run.  Your web development team uses these resources also.

(6) Has Good Communication Skills

Maintaining a good relationship with your clients is key and depends on your ability to communicate effectively with your client.  Many development companies use tools to help you to expedite that communication.  It’s worth seeking a development partner that employs the use of these tools.

(7) Includes Clients in the Design/Development Process

It’s important to take the time to communicate project details to the client, to ensure the project takes the correct direction. The planning phase in any project is the most important, and it’s important to work with a development team that takes time to understand the project.  A good development team understands challenging requests and works with you and your client throughout the development process.

(8) Sticks with Deadlines

Meeting deadlines builds trust. It also gives your client a sense that the money they've spent has been worth the effort. Having a good track record of meeting deadlines is critical to your success. It’s important to have a development team that shares this vision.

(9) Knows and Has Access to Latest Design Techniques

This one is obvious. Looking for a development team that has the most up to date knowledge in technology trends keeps you ahead of your competitors.

(10) Efficient and Trustworthy

Being efficient is not just being deadline-driven. It also means that you and your development team share the ability to get the work done in the most cost efficient way for your client.  Having this perspective increases your level of trustworthiness, and will increase your business. It’s important that your development team share the same perspective.

Your profitability as a designer depends on many things, starting with client expectations. A good development team will share your vision and your passion for all of your projects.

Improving the quality of website is crucial for small business owners. You may have all the features that a site could have, the topnotch content your copywriters have written specifically for your target market, and a user-friendly interface that any visitor on your site will find helpful. However, if your site is loading too slow, not properly optimized for search and visitors, and is not being linked to by relevant sites, it would be difficult for visitors to find you on the web.

To ensure that your site will be found in the soonest possible time and manner, you can make use of free site evaluation tools to help improve your website's performance and quality.

Built With

Built With is an excellent SEO tool for finding 'hidden' technical details about your site. It can provide information about your server details, hosting, name server, email service, CMS platform used (WordPress, Magento, Drupal, etc.), and many others. Built With can also go deeper in determining if your site uses plug-ins, which JavaScript libraries are used, if there are widgets and analytics tools, and others. It can also give you a quick look at the site's meta data (meta tags, descriptions), meta robots, and if there are Open Graph meta tags.

Google Page Speed Insight

Google Page Speed Insight generates a report which suggests how you can improve your site's load time. Simply enter your site's URL in order for the tool to generate this report. The report is broken down into either a Desktop or Mobile report.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is an SEO spider which crawls websites and reports any errors. If there are bad links, it will generate a report with the 302's and 404's it finds.

Copyscape

Copyscape's free tool can find duplicate content. Enter your site's URL in order for the tool to check the web for any duplicate pages. You may also use any of its free banners on your site to deter anyone from copying content. 

NTopic

NTopic is a tool which lets you see the relevancy score of a page's target keyword. You can use this tool in finding out which target keywords your competitors are using, so you can use them to your own advantage - such as creating content for marketing purposes and short social media descriptions.

SEMrush

SEMrush is quite popular among SEO professionals. It can generate reports that are rich in data, but the most relevant is the report for keywords. Like NTopic, you can use SEMrush in finding out what target keywords are being used by your competitors.

Word Stream Free Keyword Tool

The limited free edition of Word Stream provides suggested keywords based on broad matches. This free tool also provides relative search volume estimates and generates a list of longtail keywords which can be very useful in your content marketing efforts and blog posting.

Get Listed

Moz now owns Get Listed, which is a tool that crawls the major business directories online, and extracts business names and locations (via zip code), and identifies missing listings in the results. This tool is great for showing your clients missed opportunities and low-hanging fruit.

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer is a great tool for competitor analysis. It generates a list of inbound links and provides their own SERP ranking score - Page Authority and Domain Authority - which is regarded to have the highest correlation to SERP rankings.

Anchor Text Over Optimization Tool

This is a tool for discovering potential anchor text issues quickly. You can check for over optimized anchor text for incoming links.

Similar Web

Similar Web can check for missing data that are not included in Google Analytics. It provides estimates such as traffic, referring sites, ads, etc.

Circle Count

Circle Count is the number of people on your Google+ circle. You can use it to track followers and shares.

Share Tally

Share Tally provides a bird's eye view of a web page's social activity. You can generate an instant report of social sharing activities all across major social networks. This tool can help you determine which social media network is performing well for your own website or your clients'.

Follower Wonk

Another of Moz's free site evaluation tool is Follower Wonk. It is a Twitter analytics tool which helps you precisely analyze any Twitter user. You can generate reports based on geographical locations, keywords, and many others.

Pingdom Full Page Test

Pingdom Full Page Test is a site speed analyzer which identifies bottlenecks and measures site performance in seconds. It also tells you the best places on your site that need updates, so you can change it and reap rewards with little effort.

Hubspot Marketing Grader

Hubspot offers a free marketing grader which evaluates your site by grading its weaknesses and strengths by assessing the landing pages, social media connectivity, and many others. It will also compare your site to competitor sites to help identify the areas where your competitor attracts customers.

SEOQuake

SEOQuake is a toolbar which can be used on Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera browsers. It analyzes internal and external links, provides Alexa and Google Index scores, and PageRank. It can also measure keyword density of web pages and provides diagnosis of areas on your website which might be needing improvement.

Hubshout

Hubshout has a website grader that provides in-depth site evaluation and backlink scorecard which is specifically useful in checking if your site is at par with your competitor or not.

WebsiteOptimization

WebsiteOptimization has a technical site evaluator and SEO analysis tool that tests your site to see if it's optimized. It also provides suggestions on how to improve your site. You can also make use of their spell checker for your site pages.

Site Evaluator

Site Evaluator provides a free comprehensive evaluation of your web site and analyzes over 60 key metrics that can tell you how to improve your site’s visibility, traffic, and revenue.

A site evaluator is more than just a handy tool to find out about your own website. You can always check your competitors, your clients' websites and their competitors to help you improve site performance and quality.

You never get a second chance to make a really great first impression on your customers. 

And, your home page is the key to making that great first impression – at least online. Your home page should really set you apart.

Think of it like the virtual front door of your home … almost like your face to the world.  If someone doesn’t like what they see, all they have to do is hit the back button. And that’s the last thing that you want to happen. 

So, I scoured the internet and came up with some things to keep in mind when designing your site.

Visuals:

• Whether large or small, use beautiful images with a slick layout. 
• Place featured items boldly and neatly in an easy-to-see position and where you’ll see the greatest amount of web traffic.
• The most attractive homepages feature their products and services in a well-organized, clean and clutter free format.
• Sometimes a home page can feel like a story book or tells a story

Content:

• Make sure that your site design communicates immediately what the site is selling.
• Consider adding updatable information on the home page to keep visitors coming back.
• Consider adding content such as featured items, attractive slides, and price tags, articles, images and other content in an interactive format.
• Grids and columns can help to guide the eye.
• Have a unique brand look and feel that sets you apart from your competition.
• Consider a large banner to convey the message and segmented sections to break up the content.

• Consider a design that’s clean with easy to locate menu items.
• Use categories neatly placed for easy navigation.
• Neatly placed social icons make it easy to share.
• Using a “Latest Posts” tab gives viewers more content to consume.
• Consider a video embedded into the main visual area of the home page
• Using a “sign in with Facebook” button

Technology Advancements

Use updated technology to create a greater immersive user experience, such as

• Continuous scrolling tiles
• Interactive menus
• Uses parallax scrolling

Check sites such as www.costa.co.uk, JayZ’s Life and Times and the Seattle Space Needle and Discover Tennessee for scrolling and interactive menu samples.

There are so many amazing examples of great web design, and finding a style that suits your brand may appear challenging.  Your goal is to create a great looking home page that provides site visitors with a user friendly experience.  Take the time to learn about your customers, create a site that they will love and you should have a great experience!

If you’re looking to be able to increase your online business, one resource that small business retailers may not be considering is LinkedIn.  
LinkedIn now boasts over 200 million registered users in over 200 countries around the world.  Currently, there are more than three million companies with LinkedIn pages, and indications show that professionals are signing up at a rate of approximately two new members per second.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network.  

So how can you benefit?

Reach.    Chances are many of your employees are posting their profiles on LinkedIn.  If you have a profile on Linked In, everyone that connects with you may potentially click on your company name to find out more.  
It’s important to take advantage of this by building a company page on LinkedIn.
If you’re unsure of how to build a company page on LinkedIn, click here. 

Awareness.  Within LinkedIn, there is a section to talk about specific products and services that you provide.  LinkedIn allows you to add several products with pictures and descriptions, to highlight everything that you offer.

Optimize.  By creating a LinkedIn company page, you’ll increase the visibility of your company.  If you post jobs, the results will appear within your expanded LinkedIn network.

LinkedIn has its’ own search engine for finding jobs.  By having a LinkedIn company page, you’ll greatly increase your visibility on the web.  Plus, you can potentially find your next great employee.

Users can easily land on your page through LinkedIn.  Every employee has the opportunity to promote your company – use this to your advantage!

When designing landing pages, there are a couple key challenges that you’ll face when optimizing your pages for the highest possible conversions. First, you’ll face various visitors from difference sources, whether through paid, social or email campaigns.  Remember to use the same language used in the campaign.  Visitors see this as “message match”, and this helps to develop trust with the customer and eventually convert them.

People who visit your landing pages need to be persuaded to purchase through the use of targeted messaging.  But with all of the different visitors, campaigns and locations, how can you set up landing pages specific to all of different targets?  They key is to generally define audience ‘types’ and then create landing pages with specific messages to these targets.

The next challenge is to capture the data that you need from the site visitor in the hopes of creating a conversion.  This usually involves having some kind of form on the page.  Asking visitors to fill out a form can be challenging, so the less fields to fill, the better.  Remember that people don’t give their information easily, so designing the page with branded visuals helps in portraying trust and authority for your brand.

Why take time to optimize your landing page?

It expedites the sales process.  Capturing data from your prospects helps you to expedite your sales process.  One you have their information, you can place them in to your sales cycle and eventually turn them into customers.

It will lower your cost per lead.  When your landing pages become more successful, your cost per lead goes down.  It’s important to drive traffic to your landing pages to promote their success.  A lot of time and money goes into creating your campaigns, be sure to make them pay off as much as possible.

What do you need to include on your page?

Here is a short list of items that should be on every landing page:

• Logo
• Offer.  The images and text on the page should answer this one question for your visitors:  “What can you do for me”.  This should be the first thing they see when they visit the page.
• Large, beautiful image.  The image should relate to the text and offer in some way. 
• Call to action.  Your call to action should be clear and concise.  Be sure to make the steps obvious and easy to do.
• No Navigation.  If possible, remove any non-essential navigation on the page.  You want page visitors to focus on your offer.
• Form.  The length and usability of the form is crucial in getting conversions.  Remember that the lower the number of fields in your form, the greater number of leads you’ll receive.

Landing pages should be usable, readable, and persuasive and appear trustworthy.