So, you've decided you want to develop a website but you don't have all the technical know-how and you've started looking for a website designer. Well here are a few things you have to know first to make a good decision.

You must first identify what type of site it's going to be; a blog, an article site or maybe a company site, it's up to you. If you don't know then talk with a web designer about your idea and a good web designer should be able to recommend a website type FREE of charge. Any web designer that charges you for this information is either a scammer or very inexperienced, in which case you don't want to deal with them.

Once you have found what type of site you would like designed, ask for a portfolio of similar projects that the website designer has done. Look through them and contact the owners of these sites to verify that this designer did in fact make this site. Anybody can claim to have designed a site but you must ask the site owner whether they actually did, through their email or contact information on their site. If this works meets your requirements than continue with these steps, if not start looking again for a designer.

Another thing you must do to is check if the designer has a site of their own. This is because there are several people who claim they can make websites but in fact will just sell you a template that they downloaded somewhere. You don't want this because on the web individuality is everything and it's what drives visitors in their hundreds and thousands to your site.

You should also find out how they will be coding your site and what experience they have with that programming language. There are 3 main types; html, php and asp (in my opinion). PHP and ASP are better for dynamic sites like news sites and social networks as well as blogs. HTML is better for static sites such as company sites. Flash is also another site type that is becoming more and more popular but if you are inexperienced in website creation, I would advise you to steer clear away from this type of website. After your first few projects, you may be able to consider this option and make an informed decision.

Another thing you would need to talk to your designer about is whether you can easily update your site (for obvious reasons) or whether it will be too complex and the designer will have to do it. If the second option, then you will have to agree with the designer how much they will charge each month before hand to avoid conflict or unnecessary expense to you and your business. Being able to update your site is good for article sites and news sites where they will have to be updated regularly. Blogs should be updated by you easily anyway if any web designer says it won't be, steer clear away from them.

So in conclusion, the things you need to look out for when choosing a web designer are:

· A good looking, verifiable portfolio

· Which type of sites they can design

· Which programming languages they can work with

· Whether they can update sites or let you update them

· If they have their own site

While all attempts have been made by me to ensure that you will choose a good web designer, you must follow these steps to ensure the designer you choose is capable of good work.

If all else fails, follow your instinct and if something seems to good to be true, it usually is. I wish you the best of luck.