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Hiring a web developer has many advantages over handling all website creation tasks alone or relying on a ready-made design. If you want to quickly achieve the best results with your online project, hiring a professional web developer should be your right choice. How to hire a web developer so that your project runs smoothly? Our guide gives you an answer. We cover all the major steps in selecting the best candidate to help you achieve the best results with your project. Let’s dive in!
Step 1. Set Clear Goals
Before taking the first steps in finding a perfect candidate to provide you with web development services, you need to make sure that you have clearly defined your project, including its specifications, goals, audience, and other criteria.
When it comes to bringing any changes to your website, the tasks commonly originate from two sources:
- Design (including logo design, header image, or working on the page layout). Do you need a complete website or some specific elements only?
- Coding (including applying changes to your website’s management panel and adding custom functionality to your website). What features do you need? For example, e-commerce capabilities, custom forms, or interactive elements.
Depending on your project’s objectives, you will need to hire a web developer who will be able to complete the specified tasks. Suppose you need to crater an entire website. In that case, you need to hire different people or rely on a WordPress development company in New York, for example, which provides you with an extensive set of web development services without making you look for the ideal candidate on the web.
By clearly specifying your goals and project requirements, you can eliminate the wrong candidates, receive better estimates, and achieve greater clarity.
Step 2. Decide on the Type of Web Developer You Need
What kind of a web developer do you need? The term “web developer” is multi-faceted, covering diverse skills and obligations. By determining your project’s specifications and scope of work, you will easily decide on the correct type of web developer to hire to achieve your goals. That said, you need to understand the difference between different types of web developers clearly:
- Web developer vs web designer. A web designer is responsible for creating the look of your website. They commonly work in Figma and other graphic design programs and create the design of your entire website or its separate elements. A web developer is a person who writes the code, edits your current project or modifies your entire website from scratch. They commonly work with code editors and diverse development-related tools.
- Front-end vs. back-end developers. A user sees the front-end part of a website in their web browser; the back-end is everything behind that. A website’s back-end is where you manage your website and how it communicates with the database and a web server. A front-end developer is the person who implements the design. A back-end developer focuses on how your website works. They consider its functionality, loading speeds, overall performance, and other technical considerations. A back-end developer commonly works with PHP (especially when it comes to WordPress website development), Java, Python, and other programming languages.
- Full-stack developers. Web designers, front-end and back-end developers are niche-specific specialists with expertise in their discipline. A full-stack developer is a person who can build your website from scratch. They commonly possess the knowledge of each of the three experts above, meaning they can design, implement, and code your project. Although their knowledge is not as deep as that of all those niche experts, they can provide the necessary results, saving you time and money to complete your project.
Step 3. Set a Budget
It’s one of the most difficult estimates you need to make when looking for a web developer to hire. The price of a web developer’s services depends on many factors, like the candidate’s skills, your project’s size, the scope of work, the web developer’s location, the place where you found them, etc.
Depending on your project and the request of a web developer, consider offering either a fixed fee or an hourly rate as a payment option. Offering an hourly rate would be a better option for hiring an experienced web developer to complete a small project of up to one week. A longer project lasting several weeks or months should have a fixed price.
An experienced developer needs less time to complete the job. They will likely have fewer revisions than inexperienced developers, which makes hourly pay a better and cheaper solution. Large projects can produce a lot of costs if paid hourly due to the changes, revisions, and fixes. It’s better to agree on a fixed price when hiring a web developer for such purposes.
What are the estimates? The price of a web developer’s services depends on many factors. Here are several reference points for you to have an idea of the rates you may expect:
- Web designer: $25 – $120/h
- Front-end developer: $15 – $150+/h
- Back-end developer: $35 – $150+/h
- Full-stack developer: $75 – $150+/h
Step 4. Find a Web Developer
Luckily, we live in an age when everything and everyone can be found online, including a web developer.
- You can find a perfect candidate in web development agencies like IT Monks.
- Freelance websites like Upwork are also at your disposal.
- Do not forget about job boards like LinkedIn.
- Finally, you can find a perfect candidate while asking for recommendations from your network.
Step 5. Evaluate Candidates
To find a perfect candidate, you will need to review the CVs and portfolios of web developers applying to work on your project. To find an ideal match, mind several major guidelines on how to hire the right web developer:
- Ensure the candidate’s qualifications match your technical requirements.
- Mind the candidate’s communication skills and how fast they respond to your queries. The speed and clarity of answers are among the major factors impacting your decision-making.
- Review their previous projects. Focus on the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.
- Mind customer ratings. Many job portals welcome clients to rate web developers they worked with.
- Invite several candidates you enjoyed the most to complete a paid test. It’s a good idea to ask them to complete a small task to see how well it goes before hiring the candidate to work on your big project.
Step 6. Agree on Deliverables and Timeline
Once you feel like you’ve found a perfect candidate for your project, clearly define the scope, deliverables, timeline, and payment terms to ensure you will avoid any misunderstanding in the future.
Over to You
Although plenty of options are available these days to build a website, hiring an experienced web developer is the best way to ensure you will get a result that fully meets your expectations. Finding a perfect candidate to hire for your project may take a while. However, following the steps described in our guide will make the experience easier.