It’s important to keep in mind that a front end developer is not the same as a web designer, even though their jobs can seem similar. A front end developer would take the layouts created by a designer, and bring them to life by making them interactive. Toptal’s ability to rapidly match our project with the best developers was just superb. The developers have become part of our team, and I’m amazed at the level of professional commitment each of them has demonstrated.

how to hire a web developer

If you’re looking for a local developer and post it in the right places, you’ll likely get a good response. HackerNews is a community of startup professionals founded by Y Combinator. The audience and users of HackerNews are typically talented marketing, design, and web development pros. Recruiters can look at profiles to see how someone has contributed to the community.

Have your website built on a platform you can use

His latest technology focus has been on eCommerce, full-stack web development, and ElasticSearch. Dan had many opportunities to architect and deliver large-scale solutions to clients while staying hands-on with the technology throughout his career. He loves creating scalable back ends and is an expert in crafting modern and performant mobile, web, and desktop apps. If you run an online business, you’ll likely need to hire a web developer at some point. Doing so will save you from paying extra costs in the event of the project taking more time.

how to hire a web developer

Alison of Moonlit Media of Gilbertsville, PA has a starting per-project rate of $1,500 for website design packages. The company also built small websites for $500 and “currently work with firms that spend in excess of $100,000 annually,” according to its profile. Tech blogs, like the one you are reading, where web development teams give handy tips to their future and current clients, sharing their expertise in development.

Define your requirements

Upwork is the most popular job marketplace for finding freelancers. The site has many useful tools, including time tracking, automated payment per achieved milestones. Full-stack developers are experienced in developing both the front and back-end of websites. Such specialists are becoming popular among start-ups that have limited resources.

The best remote developers will have these characteristics in abundance, and will have developed and demonstrated them over a successful career. The world of web development is never stagnant, meaning there’s always something new to explore and learn. Curious web developers will keep improving and upgrading their set of skills.

Do you need a web developer or a dedicated web development team? Do you want to add a contact form to your landing page or develop a sophisticated client-side web service with cloud hosting integration? You see, there are many questions to be answered as well as options to choose from.

Along with the type of developer, you’ll also need to specify your project’s budget. However, if your project requires both front and backend work, it can be less expensive to hire a full-stack developer instead how to hire a web developer of a frontend and backend developer to work on each area separately. If you are looking to improve your site’s performance, integrate new tools, or resolve technical issues, a backend developer can help.

Full-time vs. freelancer or a contractor developer

Client-side functions are a bit more complex for a non-technical person to understand, but it comes down to the way modern websites are built. Depending on the project and the skill of the designer, the designer might also apply psychology to leave the end user in awe of the product. Front-end developers take all of the design mockups and builds them into the actual website. Online businesses need talented developers to create amazing customer experiences that beat the competition. Although there is plenty of demand for web developers at the moment, finding a great one is definitely within reach.

Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals. Front-end web developers work on the visual part of the website—the pages visitors see and interact with . They design the physical layout of each page, integrate graphics, and use HTML and JavaScript to enhance the site.

  • This collection of projects shows potential employers what you’re capable of creating.
  • Pay attention to both the work and their communication throughout.
  • Allows corporations to quickly assemble teams that have the right skills for specific projects.
  • Filtering and processing is so important that it’s almost impossible to get a good developer without having a good system in place.
  • This will allow them to upload files, install third-party software, and view server logs.

Outsourcing your web development project often proves to be the best choice as a professional team of web developers have the required skills and experience to finish a web project satisfactorily. You can hire a technical consultant to take interviews with the web developers on your behalf in case you do not have a technical team member on board. You could also assess the open-source projects on GitHub posted by your prospective team of web developers. These GitHub projects will give you an idea about the technical capabilities of your web developers.

Knowing When to Hire a Web Designer

You should be able to find the applicants profiles across different social media and freelance marketplaces, to get a sense as to what other people say about this person. At this step, you’re basically looking at any signs that this developer might be unreliable and otherwise any negative reviews about the developer. Just keep in mind that a bad review does not automatically mean you will have a bad experience with a certain person, but any comments about unreliability need to be taken very seriously.

This paying model includes paying the hourly rate of each developer based on actual time spent on development. Mike is a seasoned full-stack developer and software architect with in-depth knowledge of Node.js, Ruby on Rails, and React. He has a unique ability of understanding and translating business requirements into development roadmaps. In his previous roles as a team lead and CTO, he has developed strong project management and communication skills. If you have a project that requires years of work and you want to maintain tight control over your company, then building an in-house team is the way forward. Before you hire an in-house team of web developers, understand that this happens to be the most costly option of building a web application.

Ultimately, it’s about finding the right developer with the right hard and soft skills to make a real impact in your business. The exception to this rule is developer-specific job boards or communities. If you want the best outcomes from your developer job search, stay away from Indeed or Monster. Instead, invest in sites such as StackOverflow, Dice, Crunchboard, and GitHub to find developers in their natural habitats. By utilizing the knowledge we’ve covered above, hopefully, you should have an idea of what skills and experience the ideal web developer needs for the work you have in mind.

Provide the content for the site

A Facebook “like” is information submitted to Facebook by a user, then displayed elsewhere on the site — it’s the back-end developer who built this. An example of design functionality would be if your website requires a menu that opens once it’s clicked or any ecommerce functions, for instance. To illustrate the differences between the three, let’s look at the scenarios in which you would use a specific type of designer or developer. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, spend some time coming up with exactly what you want from your developer hire. As we saw earlier web developers earn anywhere from $50k to $100k annually, averaging at $67k, so to tempt them to your business, you need to be willing to pay the right amount.

They contributed and took ownership of the development just like everyone else. Alex is a senior full-stack developer, working on the Microsoft platform for almost two decades. He has a strong background in IT security and secure coding practices combined with working with founders in fast-paced environments to create their software prototypes and MVPs. Matthew has over 15 years of experience in database management and software development, with a strong focus on full-stack web applications. He specializes in Django and Vue.js with expertise deploying to both server and serverless environments on AWS.

Payment model

While you’ll likely need a developer to help with some website maintenance down the road, you don’t want to pay that high hourly rate just to fix typos. A WordPress site is a good option for blogs and content-heavy websites. Even if you consider yourself a tech-savvy individual, a lot of hard work goes into building a website. Many drag-and-drop website builders make building your own website an easy to do-it-yourself project.

But the two bigger, more concrete types that you’ll want to be aware of are User Experience designers and User Interface designers. This site was built with Shopify, a website builder made specifically for people who want to sell products online. Ask yourself how important it is to dazzle your audience with a truly special website.

Performance is central to a user’s experience with any application. Users have become increasingly intolerant of slow page load times and, knowing this, the large search engines actually quantify that time for each of the pages that their bots crawl. Toptal makes finding a candidate extremely easy and gives you peace-of-mind that they have the skills to deliver. I would definitely recommend their services to anyone looking for highly-skilled developers. Toptal’s developers and architects have been both very professional and easy to work with. The solution they produced was fairly priced and top quality, reducing our time to launch.