You don’t have to be a digital marketing pro to know how important a website is to modern business. As both a digital interface for delivering products and services and a vehicle for generating leads, your website needs to look good. If you want to deliver a smooth customer experience and look good while doing it, a web designer can help.

So how do you find a web designer? What follows are some tips for finding top web designers on Freelancing Web.

As you’re browsing available web design consultants, it can be helpful to develop a shortlist of the freelancers you may want to interview. You can screen profiles on criteria such as:

• Project fit.You want a web designer who understands the type of web application you are trying to build (e.g., ecommerce site vs. landing page).
• Portfolio.
• The best way to gauge the talent of a web designer is to see examples of their past work.
• Feedback.Reviews from past clients are a good way to see if a given freelance web designer is someone you want to work with.

Why are you engaging a web designer? With the above capabilities in mind, let’s identify what you need to get done so you can begin to match skills (and talent) to your project’s requirements.

A web designer can handle a variety of different projects, such as:

• Top-to-bottom website design—at each phase, from mock-ups and wireframes to clickable prototypes
• Theme customizations—if you’re building a site with a CMS, chances are you’ll choose a theme then have them tweak it to your specifications
• Design adjustments to improve responsiveness on mobile, sales, conversions, and time-on-page, or to fix reported issues or problems identified in user testing
• Routine maintenance to a site, plugins, and designs
• Asset creation including banners, landing pages, and other design elements
• Responsive design to enhance mobile access

With a clear picture of your ideal web designer in mind, it’s time to write that job post. Although you don’t need a full job description as you would when hiring an employee, aim to provide enough detail for a contractor to know if they’re the right fit for the project.

An effective web design job post should include:

• Scope of work: From designing a shopping cart for your ecommerce site to handling the layout of a sales page for your coaching platform, list all the deliverables you’ll need.
• Project length: Your job post should indicate whether this is a smaller or larger project.
• Background: If you prefer experience working with certain industries software, or content management systems, mention this here.
• Budget: Set a budget and note your preference for hourly rates vs. fixed-price contracts.

Ready to give your website a visual upgrade? Log in and post your web design job on Freelancing Web today.