When you’re looking to build a website, you may consider your options in working with various freelancers. To create a user-friendly, aesthetically-pleasing website that suits your brand’s vision, you may need to work with both a web developer and web designer.

Instead of having too many cooks in the kitchen, one solution to this may be to work with one freelancer who has multiple skill sets, which can make the workflow more efficient and help you stay on budget (which is essential in the start-up world)! When you work with just one person, you have the chance to develop a relationship with them! 

The best work comes out of great relationships. Honesty, respect and trust are the keys to a great relationship. When seen as working partners, you’re comfortable with them and the work conversations can be productive and enjoyable! 

In my experience, web designers have that extra oomph if they have front-end development knowledge. This means that as a busy business owner just starting out, you don’t have to worry about hiring both a web developer and a web designer. 

When you have two different freelancers,  there may be a lot of time spent going back and forth to plan the website. When you have a freelancer who’s a web designer with the coding know-how, there are no problems working with two different people who don’t understand how each other work because they’re simply the same person! The design is something reasonable to execute and there’s no time wasted consulting a developer on how to do it. 

Web designer/front-end web developers are web designers first, and web developers second. I like to call them hybrids! They are able to listen to their clients, come up with a strategy that hits their goals, create a vision that suits their needs, design and execute the right website for them, and use their communication skills to make sure that the right vision is being portrayed in the final product.

Hybrids provide better value for their time simply because when they’re designing, they’re thinking ahead about how to execute that design in the front-end development process. As a busy business owner that wears all the hats, this is a MUST to think about when outsourcing your website. Your project timeline will be faster because hybrids can better predict how much work needs to be done and know how quickly they can get it done! 

As a web designer for small business owners, my primary goal is to craft a beautiful website that reaches my clients’ goals. But with my knowledge in front-end development, I can customize your website further with additional HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding to add that level of flair to start your business off on the right foot! There is a lot of added value when you work with a web designer with coding knowledge and also if you want to become a web designer with coding knowledge.