Ash, you might want to set your phone sideways to fill the horizontal screen. Just a thought. Anyway, I’m a photographer and web designer. Check me out http://jrphotofilm.com Love your stuff.

If you’re going to hire a web designer, make sure you understand what you’re asking for.

I put my web design business on hold while I figure out how to 1) educate the clientele in what they want, what they can expect, and what they should know and 2) keep bad clients (or as many as possible) out of the pipeline so I can avoid an early stress death at my keyboard.

A website is not a website is not a website. WordPress is almost always the way to go for small business websites. While it’s super-easy for the customer to modify, it takes a kick-ass web developer to keep very complex websites easy for the customer to modify.

Understand SEO, usability, and your rights when it comes to hosting, ownership, content, modification, and the site itself.

I’ve seen more folks ripped off through “designers” promising $7k-10k websites – delivered via a custom CMS, Flash, or something else crazy as balls that no honest geek would abide.

As a way of assuaging my industry guilt, I used to do websites for $500 or less. Folks didn’t want to pay a damn dime to help themselves. Said they could get it cheaper from their high-school aged cousin down the street. $500 is 1/10th the industry average.
I bumped the price up when I started aiming for more established business owners. Charged $1,500 which included an online store and a design. This is about 1/4th the industry average. I had more folks ask for “the new facebook” in terms of functionality than anyone else and then complain when I adjusted the price upward to match the number of hours it would take to build that kind of site. I worked myself to death for people who knew they were getting a “steal” and didn’t care.

In short – web developers and web designers are not all made the same. Do your homework and get educated. Treat your web person with respect. I don’t care if you want lens flares, pop-ups, rainbow gradients, or to “get rid of that Facebook thing” – the answer is no, dammit. Either trust that their expertise will lead you in the right direction or get educated so you can prove ‘em wrong.