A website is one of the vital parts of your online business. It’s a crucial element of your overall brand and can not only bring customer awareness but profit too.
While it might be great to create your own website, hiring a web developer is still recommended, especially if you want to create a robust, powerful site and expect high traffic.
In this article, I would like to tell you everything about hiring web developers: where to find them, how much do they cost and what to look out for.
Why Would You Need to Hire a Web Developer?
With all the available CMSs and website builders, you might wonder: why should you hire a web developer in the first place?
That’s a valid question! There are plenty of great platforms that can help you make a site yourself, such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. They are easy to use and have plenty of tutorials for you to follow.
What is more, there are website builders such as Wix. These tools make creating a website incredibly fast, due to their use of drag and drop builders.
However, creating your own website is not always the best choice. As I said earlier, hiring web developers offers many benefits you can’t get from creating it yourself.
Here are a few of them:
- Saving Your Time. As a business, focusing on marketing and sales might be more important than spending too much time dealing with the nitty-gritty of web creation.
- Getting High-Quality Results. Hiring a web developer will guarantee a powerful, fully functional website.
- Eliminating Technical Difficulties. Unless you have great coding skills, it will be hard and time-consuming to create a perfect website.
For example, if you are targeting mobile devices’ users, having a mobile responsive design website is a must. That means having little knowledge of it would hinder you from providing the best results.
Know What You Want to Do
Now, if you have decided to hire a web developer, it’s important to be clear and precise of what kind of site you need. Being vague about details will result in losing time and money.
To help you get the bigger picture, you can start with these questions:
- Who do you want to hire?
- What is the deadline for your project?
- What to expect of your hired developer?
- What detailed information you can share with the developer?
Having all the answers to these questions could save your time and avoid confusion that may lead to unnecessary delays in getting the job done.
For example, if you want to build an online store, providing an easy buying process is essential to gain better conversion rates. So, you can ask your developer to create great shopping cart features which are not only attractive but handy.
Or, if you have a few examples of the design you want, share it with your developer and ask them to make a customized and unique theme based on those examples.
Understand What a Web Developer Really Is
After you have detailed information about your project, then it is time to choose the right candidate.
But, selecting the person requires you to understand what kind of developer you need and what type of job you would offer to them.
Job Function
For most people, a web developer is simply an expert who has the skills to create a website. Actually, you can break it down into a few types of developers based on their job function.
Web Designer
As its name, a web designer is a developer whose role focuses on design — making the style and the layout of the website looks great.
Web designers commonly use design software like Adobe Photoshop and may have sufficient knowledge about HTML and CSS.
If you go further, you may find that web designers themselves have certain specialization such as dealing with User Experience, User Interface or Visual Design. Here, let’s just call them web designers.
Web Developer
After having your web design, you need to turn it into a fully functional website. This is a web developer’s area of expertise.
A web developer handles the code and often deals with various programming languages. Basically, there are two types of web developers: front-end and back-end.
Front-end developers deal with the client-side, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to make your website run well on any browser.
A back-end developer is responsible to make sure the website has good structure and works fast — dealing with PHP, Python, and Java.
Full-stack Developer
If you want to have a developer that has both skills as a front-end and back-end developer, you can hire a full stack developer.
Web Implementer
Another type of developer is the web implementer. Unlike others, a web implementer deals with a narrow scope based on the platform they use such as Wix or WordPress.
For instance, WordPress implementer would use various WordPress tools such as frameworks, page builders and plugins to build a WordPress site. So, if you plan to use WordPress, you know who you would hire.
Job Type
Another thing that you need to consider when hiring a developer is the type of job you want to offer.
Basically, there are two types of job for a developer: Freelancer and Full-time.
Each type has its own advantages, so make sure you hire the one that suits your needs. Please note, the different language skills the developer has would determine their salary rates. We will talk about it later.
Freelance Developer
A freelance developer is great for those, who need someone for a one-time deal.
In addition, hiring a freelancer will eliminate additional costs for insurance, providing a workspace and so on.
To find a good freelance developer, there are many platforms you can choose. Here three of them:
Toptal is one of the most famous platforms to hire freelancers. You just need to share the information about your project and the platform will find the best professional for you.
Upwork is another platform to hire freelance web developers. Once you register, you can choose the freelancer you want to work with based on their profile. This platform offers different membership plans you can choose from based on your budget.
PeoplePerHour has more than 1.5 million active freelancers. Basically, you can either post a job for freelancers to bid or you can search by type of job you need.
For example, when you type “web developer”, you will have more than 15 thousand results that you can filter based on location, language or industry.
Full-time Developer
In this situation, you will hire a developer to work for you full-time.
As building an online business requires maintenance on a daily basis, you can’t pass the job to a freelancer. You need a full-time developer to focus on your project.
Also, having an in-house developer means you can communicate easier if you plan to make further developments.
Things to Look Out for from a Web Developer
If you are ready to select the best candidate to work with, you need to prepare certain criteria for decision making.
The things that you should consider are:
Technical Skills
You can use a checklist to ensure that your candidates have the exact technical skills you require for your project.
For example, if you need a website designer, then they should master in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Adobe Photoshop. If you are using WordPress, then you can add PHP too.
Portfolio
Looking at the candidate’s previous jobs will help you understand if they are suitable for the project.
Each developer has different skills and work experience, so seeing work samples from their portfolio will help you make the best pick.
Communication Skills
It is important to evaluate how well they communicate and how well they understand the project.
This factor is especially important if you’re planning to hire a freelancer since most of the time they will be working remotely. Poor communication skills will result in issues.
Rating
If you’re hiring a freelance web developer, always make sure to check their ratings. The person might have a great portfolio, but very poor ratings. It’s always good to see what other clients have to say about a certain freelancer.
Response Time
Always make sure the developer you want to hire responds in a fast manner. This, of course, is more aimed at freelancers, since most likely you won’t see them on a daily basis.
As you might know that a freelancer can work on more than one project at a time. But, ignoring your calls because he is busy doing another project is simply unprofessional.
Salary Expectation
Always make sure to negotiate the salary before hiring. Different web developers might have different expectations, so it’s very important to find one that fits your budget.
How Much Does Hiring a Web Developer Cost?
Before going to set the exact number, you need to determine if the agreement will be a fixed price based on the project, or you’ll set an hourly rate.
You should not be confused with these choices as you can set the budget based on the project you work on.
As an illustration, if you have a small project that may take up to a week to finish it, you should hire a seasoned developer based on an hourly price. This way, you will get the best results within a short time but won’t go broke.
If you have the same project but prefer to hire an inexperienced developer, you can offer them a fixed price. Most of the time, there will be revisions needed, so paying hourly will be much more pricey.
Keep in mind that an experienced developer will always charge more. However, their work will most likely be of better quality.
In the United States, the salary for a web developer ranges from $75,000 to $85,000 per year. This can help you set the rate for a full-time developer.
On the other hand, you can go to Codementor or Codeable to know the hourly rates for a web developer.
While Codeable set the price at $75/hour regardless of the freelancers’ location, Codementor has different rates for different skills and locations. For example, to hire a skillful web developer in North America from Codementor, would cost you $100/hour.
Conclusion
If you need a website and don’t have the time or skill to make one yourself – you should look into hiring web developers.
Make sure that you have clear expectations for both the project and the person you want to hire.
I hope this article gave you useful insights and you’ll find hiring web developers an easier task!
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