How I found my web site builder

It seems just about everyone can recommend a good webmaster, friends, families, email news groups etc. I even considered becoming a web designer. (A few weeks post-9/11, when I had been laid off from my high-tech star-up and was becoming disillusioned with the business world, I knew I wanted to have my own small business but could not figure out what that would be. I considered custom furniture making (took some wood working classes), web design, coffee shop, fast food places etc. Yes, I had my law degree at that time and for some reason never considered going out as a solo . . I haven’t written much about that mental block . . I am not sure where it came from but I never ever considered going solo back then, now I certainly regret it, what better time to start a law practice than when no one will offer you a full time job. )

I had no idea how to pick a web designer, I actually had very specific ideas about how I wanted the pages to look. I knew what I wanted and really just needed someone to implement it. Also the cost seemed high, certainly (i.e. above $1,000).

I ended up turning to a site called www.elance.com where you can post a job and then solicit bids and proposals (they even have legal jobs posted but I have not pursued them, not sure how the out of state element works). There is no cost to posting a job on elance and no obligation to select a bidder, so it might be worth a try to see what kind of response you get. I posted a very basic description, saying I wanted a 5 page web site for a new law practice. I may have included a mock-up in Microsoft word (using the drawing feature) of what I wanted the general design to look like; if you have an existing site include a link to it. (Tip: when you post a bid not click on the box that basically says you only want premier bidders (aka higher priced bidders) to respond, I thought about doing this but did not and got plenty of good proposals). The job stays posted for a week although you do not have to wait that long to award the job to someone. In that week, I got 35+ different bids from all over the world, some even sent me a mock-up of the site (complete with my name etc., lots of judge’s gavels and scales of justice). The prices ranged from $150 to $3000 and came from all over the world. One problem I had was that it took forever for me to go through all of the proposals, review their portfolios etc. This led to a few weeks of decision paralysis on my part. You can pretty quickly eliminate bids that are either too high or that do not have enough of a track record of feedback. You can also eliminate bids from certain countries or based on their portfolios (which ultimately start to look the same). In my case, it turned out that one of the lowest priced bidders was also the one I liked the best and he was based in India. All payment is made through the elance service (you can do PayPal but based on a bad experience for another job I did through elance I would only use the elance system because it keeps it all under one roof, if there is a problem at least elance has a record of payment made). I sent my India bidder the word document that had the basic coloring and layout of how I wanted it to look and he prepared two web page samples for me to choose from one based on my design and one based on his, I told him I liked mine better so we went with that. I provided the photos (most of which I found on the web . . check out corbis) where needed and the text and he built the pages and put them on the web for me to review. I probably sent him 10 to 15 rounds of edits in all, he was great to work with, everything was done via email and attachments. Finally, he loaded for me and I paid him (you pay some money at the start of the engagement and then some percentage at each point during the work). The whole thing came to under $200 and I think the result looks great.

Where there any drawbacks to doing it this way? It can take some time, he would turn around edits in between 1 and 4 days so with multiple rounds of edits it took longer than I would have liked but some of that is my fault. Also, it was sometimes hard to communicate changes unless I provided a very detailed description of what I wanted (to explain where I wanted the copyright notice, I had to do a screen shot of the page and then float in an arrow and text box to show him the exact location). I also would not consider him a real design expert, he did a great job of coding the design I wanted but I would not rely on him for design expertise. Ultimately, I had a great experience; I referred some other business to him and always found him to be extremely professional and friendly to deal with.