There are so many routes to take when designing your site, it’s a potential minefield of options to choose from. Web design encompasses so many different things that you have to stay on your toes when discussing your project with a designer, the most important thing is that you know exactly what you want.

Purpose is key in planning your website, having a clearly defined purpose for the new site will seriously help in the rest of planning of the website. Designers who completely understand the purpose of the site will be able to offer excellent insight into potential functionality features, branding ideas and useability.

Identify your audience to the designer, it’s a step too often carelessly overlooked by people wanting to their website design ed from the ground up. If you haven’t already established your audience then you’ve missed a crucial stage in the development of your website, you must come to terms with who your website will appeal to. It will influence how the designer displays the information on your site and it will affect how your site is branded.

One of the biggest decisions you’ll come to during your time planning out your website is which designer to go with. You could try sites like eLance.com to look for freelance designers, from as far a field as Eastern Europe or India to put together your site. There are obvious benefits in hiring a designer from a developing country, it is significantly cheaper than here in the west. The difference is that you’ll be dealing with non-native english speaker and you won’t get the full benefits of a face to face consultation. Of course the simplest way to find a developer locally is to punch “web design manchester” into google, and scroll through the results.

Get quotes from plenty of places before you choose your designer, plan for perfection, and then let the designer do their thing. You will be up and running in no time.