Designing a creative and clean website takes a lot of time and skill, which is why searching for the right web designer can be a difficult task. Firstly, I'd advise you to do a bit of research into the fields you need covered, whether it's just website design or maybe you want some other aspects covered, such as search engine optimisiation (SEO) or copywriting. These are all terms that you should be familiar with, not an expert with but know the very basic so you can communicate with your web designer or agency effectively.

Once you've researched the basics of the areas you need covered, you can start looking for web designers or agencies, this will depend on the scale of your project; if want a small website designed for personal use a personal designer would be ideal. However, if you are starting a business, an agency would be best because they can offer you anything from web design to online marketing. Contact the web designers you are interested in and make notes on what they can offer and for what price, compare all of these and choose your favourite three to pursue further. If you are struggling to decide which web designer or agency to go for then search for their official website, every web designer or agency will have a website and they should use it to showcase all of their best work. Does anything impress you on their website? Have they won any awards? If their portfolio is full of work from clients then that's always a reassuring sign. One more thing to do is to search their company or individual name on Ôlinkedin.com' and see if their business is listed and also whether they have any recommendations or testimonials.

By now, you should have had a few conversations with potential web designers, from this you can work out how well you get on with them. Are they easy to chat to and did conversation flow easily? Did they know what they were talking about and sound eager to take you on? You need to be able to feel comfortable and chat comfortably to your web designer as you will both be running ideas back and forward until your website is complete. Another important point to find out is whether your web designer offers an aftercare service or any support once the website has been implemented. It is important to have a good aftercare service incase there are any problems with your website further along down the line.

With all of the above points in mind, you shouldn't struggle to find a good designer for your website. My final piece of advice would be to go into the project with clear objectives, you have employed the designer to create your website, not read your mind. If you are hiring an agency, it is likely they will have copywriters and search engine optimisers whereas if you employ a personal website designer you may want to have some of your own content already planned. Your role is just as important in planning and knowing what you want to gain from the design. You must know your business!