Who Do You Recommend for Web Design?
Good design makes quality content look and feel better. Design can help improve conversion rate, makes a site more linkable, and sometimes a site generates additional links and mentions just for having a great aesthetic design.
I frequently get asked how we can run a wide array of websites with only a few high-quality part time employees. One of our secrets is staying away from the stuff we are no good at - like web design. I could show you my attempts at design, but you would think less of me if I did. ;)
Rather than going the DIY route, I have been getting quality custom website designs from Wildfire Marketing Group for many of our newer sites, and they look great. I liked their services enough to work a deal with them to get SEO Book training subscribers $100 off their designs, which start out at $765 for a basic design and $975 for a design + a Wordpress theme. Their services page is here, and the coupon code is here.
A couple other people I would also recommend for design work without hesitation are Sophie Wegat and Chris Pearson. Though Chris Pearson is working on Thesis and no longer is available for hire. Luckily we have a 20% off Thesis coupon too.
Comments
Thanks for the recommendations - and it's nice to see someone who realizes that design DOES play a large part in website success.
Some of the SEO/SEM industry are fond of saying "Pretty doesn't sell blue widgets, being #1 in Google does" and I have to disagree with that.
If your site looks like crap, you're not going to sell/convert much. However, combine an amazing design with a #1 ranking and you've got conversions out the wazoo!
Could i perchance add a sneaky plug for myself in here... im currently blending design, development and seo together and Taking Names with my results :)
it helps because no-one in-house complains about SEO ruining design or making development hard as its just what we do!
I have a question about general logo design. I've taken the DIY approach and so far I've gotten pretty good feedback. However, my domain name and (boring) logo were based on the city I thought this was going to stay in. Now I've taken my site to the national stage and my current logo doesn't really apply to the national crowd - should I change my domain name? Should I just try to get a logo that allows me to keep my domain, yet makes the site appear more national in nature? I'm really skeptical of changing my domain name - I would hate to see all my incoming links go stale.
I'm all ears.
Please contact me if you have ideas,
Allen, founder
madtownlounge.com
I've used crowdspring.com for a huge amount of design jobs. It really depends on your project, and how you feedback to the designers, but you can get some great work on there.
Thanks for your recommendation Aaron. It's always a pleasure. :-)
I visited a number of their highlighted sites and none of them had alt tags on images, meta descriptions or meta keywords.
While the pages look nice, that doesn't give me big confidence on their work.
Vic
Hi Vic. You don't need those to create web designs...though it wouldn't hurt for them to add them. ;)
Fortunately we do our own web design and development being both an SEO and web design/development company. And doing so I too understand how much design and development of a website really plays in marketing and optimization of that site. Having that coupled with SEO knowledge and applying it really seams to be the key to having a successful site.
I'm glad you mentioned some design/development people in a post :)
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