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10 steps to finding The Right Fit for your project How to Hire a Wordpress Designer & Developer

WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

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Tony Zeoli presentation on June 1st 2014 on how to find and hire a WordPress Designer/Developer. This presentation covers the general basic, but does not include every use case. It is meant as a broad overview. @wordcampavl #wcavl

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Page 1: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

10 steps to finding The Right Fit for your project

How to Hire a Wordpress Designer

& Developer

Page 2: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

About Me

• Digital Strategist @dswks & @tonyzeoli

• Agile/Scrum Product Development

• Information Architect

• 19 years in digital; first startup in ’95

• 9-years Wordpress

• Organizer, WordPress Chapel Hill @wordpresschill

• House Music DJ: @netmix @djtonyz

• Blogs: netmix.com, tonyzeoli.com

• Startups: 8tracks.com, neighborbee.com

• Hometown: Boston

• Lived in NYC 15-years

• NC since July 2010; Asheville in January

• Working on open adoption w/ my wife, Missy

Page 3: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

1.Define The Need

• Can a template do this?• Can a plugin do this?• Requirements• Wireframes• Examples• Schedule• Process• Launch Plan• Content

Page 4: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

2. Define The Budget

• What’s realistic?• Set by location, experience• Hourly rates

• Cheap is $10 an hour• Mid low is $20 - $65• Mid high is $65 to $95• Expensive is over $95

• Per project rate, +/- 20%

Page 5: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

3. Look Inside your network

• Personal recommendations

• Local WordPress or Design Meetup

• Network in the WordPress.org Forums

• Get WordPress.org user profile!

• LinkedIn WordPress or Graphic Design Groups

• Get a LinkedIn business profile!

• Facebook, Twitter, Google+

• Friends of friends know a WordPress designer or developer!

Page 6: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

Twitter Search

Page 7: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

4. Outside your network

• WordCamps like this one or WordPress Job Boards

• jobs.wordpress.net (official jobs board) or Woo Jobs, WPHired

• Google, Blogs, Social Media (Twitter, Pinterest)

• SlideShare

• Look in the footer!

• Craigslist is the LAST place you should look!

Page 8: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

Blogs

Page 9: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

Google Search

Page 10: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

5. Developers vs Designers

Page 11: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

5. Developers vs Designers

• Developers:

• http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/

• elance.com, freelancer.com, jobs.smashingmagazine.com, jobs.freelanceswitch.com

• ThemeForest and Code Canyon developers or developers of other themes and plugins

• Designers:

• behance.com, dribble.com or professional designer websites

• Competitions

• 99Designs.com, DesignCrowd.com, DesignContest.com, CrowdSpring.com

Page 12: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

Onshore vs Offshore

• Price - Does cheaper mean better?

• Culture - Working across cultures is a challenge.

• Language - Just because someone speaks English, doesn’t mean they get you

• Time - Working across time zones and delays

• Project Management - Can you work directly with the developer?

• Quality - Do they really know what they are doing?

Page 13: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

But my friend’s son is a web designer

Page 14: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

6.Qualifications

Page 15: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

6. Qualifications

• Without experience, you don’t, so look for:

• Portfolio

• Valid Testimonials

• At least 3 recent references

• Ability to understand your needs and COMMUNICATE

• Offshore developers will send long link lists

• some will be broken, poor content

• many will look like cheap templates done by others

• Good shops will have a formal agreement, statement of work and a professional process

• Bad developers will say just send me the money and I’ll get started…on what?

• Use your common sense. Reputation is almost everything.

Page 16: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

7. Negotiation & Payment

• Check references

• Know your developer/designer

• Get an estimate

• Estimates are difficult

• Based on wish list

• Be prepared for overage due to scope creep

• Ask for accurate record of hours spent if project is hourly

• Get a signed agreement. Handshakes and friendships end badly.

• When everyone agrees and signs off on statement of work, the work gets done.

• Payments usually half up front, then half on delivery. Some will do half then weekly payments after hours are burned.

Page 17: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

8. Communication

• Responsibility. Take ownership!

• Use project management tools like Basecamp or Trello to communicate, assign tasks and keep project files

• Set realistic goals

• I need it tomorrow is not realistic

• Every project has its challenges

• Strong communication is critical - DON’T BE AFRAID, OVER COMMUNICATE

• Transparency is also critical, think of everything you can for every conversation so nothing gets missed

Page 18: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

9. Scope Creep

• Defined a “Minimum Viable Product” or MVP. That’s what you build. Nothing more, nothing less.

• Stick to the plan you set out with. You wouldn’t build a house without ensuring the architect and builder are on the same page. Websites are no different.

• What Joe and Suzy are doing down the street is not important.

• Your execution and your ability to produce content sets you apart, not all the bells and whistles you think you need.

• Burning hours and hours of the developers time to discuss things that weren’t in the original plan wastes precious time and money.

• If you add to the project scope, expect to be billed.

• Review everything and sign off by email that you approve, so there are no miscommunications.

Page 19: WordCamp Asheville - How to find and hire a WordPress designer and developer

10. Project Completion

• Set aside a week to two weeks for QA testing to identify issues and fix bugs.

• Check off your statement of work to make sure everything included is completed.

• Is all your launch content in the site?

• By now, you should have a launch plan. Execute the plan.

• Pay your developer.

• Give a recommendation if they did a good job.

• Sometimes projects will have a phase 2 or 3 or 4 ongoing, so you should be prepared to execute the plan again and again and again. In each phase, stating the requirements, getting statement of work, signing off on phases and completing the project.