Ways to Save when Working with a Professional Web Designer

You have finally found and hired the right web designer to develop your business web site. It is now time to provide the information, graphics and other items your web developer requires.

There are ways you can help your designer by doing some of the work yourself and cutting down on the billable hours your designer charges you.

First of all, give your web developer as much information about your business as you can. He or she probably will not use all of the information you supply, but your designer strives to make your site unique. The more information you offer, the more personalized your site will be.

You are probably supplying some type of textual information to your web designer. Maybe it is from your brochure or other advertising material. If all you have is a paper copy, it can save billable hours if you type it up and send it to your web designer in digital format. A scan will not work, it has to be typed and saved in a word or text processing program. Ask your designer ahead of time what format he or she prefers.

If you are providing graphics to be used on the site, learn how to crop and re-size them. Graphic processing is resource and time-consuming. Learn how to crop and re-size your graphics. Sending smaller graphics to your developer will cut down on process time, possibly saving you some billable hours. Pictures from your digital camera or other sources usually cannot be put on your web site without re-sizing. Most digital cameras take pictures that are 1600 or more pixels wide. A graphic on a web page will rarely be larger than 500 pixels wide. Before you re-size a graphic, you can often crop out unneeded areas. Focus on the object of your photo and crop out unneeded backgrounds.

Google offers a free image software program called Picasa that can be used to crop and re-size photos. Picasa can be downloaded here, http://picasa.google.com/

If you are working with a committee on the web site, appoint one person to be the web designer's contact. The designer should only be given instructions from the appointed contact and only when the instructions are final decisions, not those that are still swirling around the committee. Get feedback from the designer, yes, but don't give him or her instructions until a final decision has been made.

Respond to your web designer's questions as quickly as possible.

Listen to your web developer. He or she knows the web and what is best for your site. Don't insist on having music on your site when your designer is giving you all of the logical reasons not to. (Unless you are a musician or in some kind of music business, of course.)

The more you help your designer, the sooner your site will be up and running. And, it just might cut down on the hours you will be billed for your web project.