How to Get the Most Out of Your Custom Website or Blog Designer

Using a custom blog theme or website design is not necessary to succeed online.

In fact, when I started doing business online, I used a free wordpress theme and was still able to generate a great income from both Adsense and selling information products. So, if you’re worried about how much money it takes to get something started online, don’t – because it doesn’t cost much at all. Find a niche, get a domain and a host, and start creating content and building authority for yourself.

Free themes are great, but there two major drawbacks:

1. Their features can be very limited.
2. They are not unique.

Everyone has access to them, so it’s not very uncommon to come across a website that uses the same free themes, even in the same niche. Although content is what really matters, I have to be honest and say that if I came across two websites that had the exact same design, it would bother me. Maybe it’s just me.

Beyond the Free Theme

You may have considered using a premium theme for your website or blog.

Premium themes are great because they usually have wonderful features that you cannot find in any of the free themes. Also, depending on where you find them, premium themes usually have excellent customer support for any customizations or troubles you have while setting it up.

That being said, I personally don’t really like to use premium themes for the following reasons:

1. Although they have more, cool features, they may not be combination of features that I want or need.
2. Even though they are far more unique than free themes, they are still not totally unique. (The Thesis Theme is excellent, but I’ve stayed away from it just for this reason.)

Personally, I think a website should be designed to how you want to present your content, not the other way around, meaning – your content shouldn’t be adjusted to tailor to a certain theme just because it looks cool.

This is why I chose to eventually go with a custom design for both of my primary blogs. Not only do they have the exact features that I want, but no one else in the world has the same design.

Getting A Custom Design

If you’re thinking about a custom design…sweet! Here are some of the places I’ve used to find really good designers:

• Elance.com: On Elance, you post your job description, and like eBay, people will bid to work on your project. Depending on your project requirements, you could get numerous bids ranging anywhere between $100 and $2000. For this blog, I paid $175 – so hopefully that just shows you it doesn’t cost as much as you’d think. You’ll have to spend some time carefully selecting your designer by reviewing their previous projects, their reviews and feedback, and their portfolio. Usually, you end up finding one that has a portfolio that matches a style you like, and you can go from there. Again, the turnaround time depends on your project requirements, but for this blog, it was a little over a week.
• Odesk.com: Odesk is just like Elance, except it has the capability to make sure your designer is working on schedule and doing things that meet your requirements. Odesk will actually require the designer to upload screenshots of their work in certain time intervals, so you can sporadically check up on his/her progress and message them if something doesn’t look right, before they go further into it and waste time. Pretty cool. Again, you’ll want to do a thorough portfolio and feedback check before selecting a designer. Remember, most of the time, you get what you pay for.
• The Footer of Websites That You Like: More often than not, a webmaster will give credit to his or her designer at the bottom or footer of their website, especially if the design is good. If you find a website design you like online, you’ve already seen and have been impressed by what the designer can do, so now it’s your turn to initiate contact and hope for a response. I’d recommend selecting 3 or 4 designers in this way so you’re not waiting around for a single response that may never come, however if they are good, active designers, they should respond to you in no time. Just so you know, quotes from these types of designers are usually (but not always), more expensive.

Selecting the right designer is very important, but there are a few things you can do on your end to make sure you get exactly what you need (and pay for) from your designer, no matter who you end up selecting.

If you’re on, or planning to use WordPress as your blogging platform, make sure you mention “Custom WordPress Theme” in your inquiry.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Designer

1. Share Your Inspiration Sites

Inspiration sites are websites that you like that may have a certain style, or certain features that you’d also like to include in yours.

Of course, you should never copy someone’s logo or text verbatim, but if you really like how something works on a website that you dig, there’s no reason why you can’t do something similar. For example, I really liked how many websites began to use a “tabbed” area to organize information like “popular posts” and “recent comments”, so I asked for that in this blog. Unfortunately, I took it out in an interim redesign, but it’s coming back in soon.

On my blog at greenexamacademy.com, I have a feature that reloads a different testimonial on the homepage after every reload. I didn’t come up with this idea on my own, but it totally works for what I do here.

Realize, however, that you can’t have every feature that you like from every website, so you’re going to have to prioritize. After selecting inspirational websites that you like and prioritizing the features that you love, your designer will create a custom design for you that is totally unique and your own.

2. Draw It Out

You can talk it out as much as you’d like, but there is no better way to communicate your custom website or theme than actually sketching it out. By doing this, you’re going to eliminate most of the “is this what you mean?”, or “like this?” conversations that often lead us amateur bloggers into headaches and frustrations. You’re going to have to sketch something up front, but you’ll end up saving time and money in the end.

You don’t have to be perfect. Even just boxes with descriptions of what they represent will help. If there is something you’re not sure of that you want them to figure out on their own, point that out on your sketch too. I usually point to a section and say something similar to:

“Here, I’m not exactly sure how to organize these three parts. I’ll leave it up to you and your creativity, but just make it looks nice and congruent with how the rest of site looks.”

Here’s a sample sketch I did for the redesign of greenexamacademy.com:

and here’s the result after the redesign:

3. Ask For a “Mock-Up” Design

In each successful custom web design experience I’ve ever had, each of the designers showed me a photoshopped “mock-up” version of the website before they actually went in and hard-coded everything. I’m not quite sure if this is standard practice within the industry, but if you find a designer that you like, and they don’t mention any kind of preliminary design review or mock-up – make sure you ask for it.

Making any changes during this phase requires far less work than after everything is coded.

4. Don’t Settle

Remember, YOU are paying THEM, so you should be satisfied with your end result. If you get a design that you feel is not up to par with what you had expected, make sure you tell the designer to fix it right away.

I’ve seen so many custom designs that are sooooo close to being perfect, but just fall short on one or two things because the webmaster just expected the design to be perfect on the first try. Don’t settle, but at the same time, don’t try and get more than you negotiated for.

My Current Redesign

The redesign of the Smart Passive Income blog is soon to come, and I’ve been having a great time working with my designer, which is why I was inspired to write this post. If you’re interested in some of the things the redesign will entail, as well as some tips that might help you for your current or future websites, I invite you to watch this 7 minute video:

(if you cannot watch this video, click here to watch Is Your Website or Blog Optimized? Here Are 5 Questions You Can Ask on YouTube).

Wishing you all a fantastic week! Thanks again for your support, and if you’re new to the blog, please feel free to subscribe to get automatic updates to your favorite RSS reader.

p.s. Here’s a bonus tip. To save some money, lots of people end up buying a premium theme they like and hire a designer to customize it, instead of creating a custom site totally from scratch. If you see a premium theme you sort of like, but its missing some features you want, this may be the best way to go. Have fun!