Hire the Top 3% of Freelance Web Designers

Demand for Web Design Continues to Expand

There are more than 1 billion websites, and more are created every year. Well-designed, easy-to-use websites are crucial touchpoints between organizations and their audiences, whether users go online to make a purchase, find information, make an appointment, or complete other tasks. In the retail space, for instance, e-commerce sales are predicted to account for 24% of all retail sales by 2026.

To stay competitive, businesses need individuals with design expertise to create, maintain, and update content such as business websites, e-commerce platforms, blogs, and landing pages—generating significant demand for skilled web designers. According to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, in 2022, 97,350 UI/UX designers were employed in the US alone.

Identifying and hiring web designers can be challenging. In this guide, we describe the key skills and qualities employers should look for when hiring freelance and remote designers to help develop websites and user interfaces. These qualities include tool mastery, depth of portfolio, business savvy, creativity, meticulous approach, knowledge of rapidly evolving technology, and most importantly, a focus on the user.

What attributes distinguish quality Web Designers from others?

What you look for when hiring a professional web designer will depend on the particular needs of your project. However, many skills and qualities are essential for any design project. Designers with these abilities stand out:

User-centric Mindset

The best websites combine usability and utility, meaning they are easy to use and enable users to achieve what they set out to do. Even if you plan to hire a dedicated user experience expert, look for web designers who prioritize user and customer needs in all their design work.

In résumés and interviews, you can recognize a user-centric mindset and expertise from phrases such as user experience (UX) design and user-centered design (UCD). Even better, when you review candidates’ portfolios, notice whether their work samples connect to user needs or whether the designs focus only on aesthetics without serving a clear purpose.

Business and Marketing Savvy

In addition to understanding the needs of users, look for web designer candidates who understand business priorities, such as optimizing conversions, increasing time on site, and building brand credibility. Designers should learn what a business wants to achieve with its online presence and the business’s marketing plans to achieve these objectives. They then align design strategy with business goals.

Creativity and Problem-solving

Creativity is an essential skill for any designer. It helps them solve problems, ask the right questions, incorporate user and stakeholder feedback, and find innovative solutions that support user needs and business goals. The design process—from identifying goals to the development of wireframes to polishing the final product—is iterative, and designers encounter and resolve problems along the way.

Attention to Detail

Minor details matter in design. A meticulous attention to detail is especially important when you hire a remote web designer because they will work with less direct supervision than on-site staff. You can identify this quality from the sites in a designer’s portfolio, as well as during the interview process.

Aesthetic Sensibility

Visual aspects of design are extremely important. Aesthetics can spark an emotional response—which has been shown to influence purchasing decisions—and users often form an impression of a website in less than a minute. Strong visual elements like effective typography and imagery can help users process information. Designers with an aesthetic sensibility and a clear vision of what a site should look like can forge the path toward success.

How can you identify the ideal Web Designer for you?

While finding the best web designer for your project can be challenging, the considerations below can help you determine the project’s needs and identify the right fit:

Junior and Senior Talent

Depending on budget and other project constraints like team size and talent availability, you may need different levels of experience in web designers.

Senior designers have both broader and deeper experience, and are better able to craft a coherent vision of how a site should appear. They have superior mastery of the overall design process. Veteran designers are more capable of handling a variety of problems and circumstances, and are better-suited for leading teams and projects. On the other hand, junior designers are more likely to be current with the latest tools and trends. Less-experienced designers can do a great job on assignments that closely match their particular skills and knowledge.

Talent Requirements

By matching the skill sets and designer qualities described above, you can maximize your chances of hiring top talent, whether at the junior or senior level. When searching for the right freelance web designer, begin by identifying the specific skills needed on a per-project basis—and which skills your team may lack that a freelance designer can bring to the table.

Designer-Project Match

There are several considerations when matching candidates with projects. For example, if you’ve already chosen a design tool suite, candidates must have experience with the relevant tools and software. Even without a predetermined tool set, candidates should have up-to-date experience with popular tools and packages. Industry experience in your particular commercial sector is also important, as is a portfolio with websites similar in form and function to the one you intend to create or update.

Will the hire be a developer as well as a designer? Will they perform their own user research, or will they work alongside a UX specialist? The answers to these questions will help determine the skills to look for when screening applicants. For additional support, talent agencies are well versed in matching candidates with projects that fit their skills and expertise.

How to Write a Web Designer Job Description for Your Project

The leading job boards and agencies have templates for web designer job descriptions that you can customize for your project. Some key competencies to include are:

Mastery of relevant design tools

Web designers may use a combination of tools to create visually appealing, functional websites. If you need a designer with experience using a particular tool, list that in the job posting as a required skill. Figma and Sketch are prominent web design tools. In addition, consider whether your project requires experience with a website builder such as Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, or Webflow, or an image editing tool like Adobe Photoshop.

Experience with responsive web design

Responsive web design ensures that content adapts to the user’s screen size whether they’re on a desktop, mobile phone, or tablet. This is essential for ensuring content is accessible and user-friendly regardless of device. According to StatCounter, more than half of web traffic worldwide is driven by mobile devices.

Emphasize the terms responsive design or adaptive design to ensure candidates can design for multiple device types and screen sizes. If you’re also looking for design support for a mobile app in addition to web design, include that in the job description.

Strong communication and presentation skills

These skills are especially important for design leads and remote hires, but all designers should cultivate strong communication skills and be able to articulate design decisions and rationales to key stakeholders.

Ability to work effectively in a collaborative environment

No designer works in a vacuum. Creative feedback is an essential aspect of design iteration and refinement. Most web projects include designers from multiple disciplines (such as graphic designers and UX experts), along with stakeholders from nondesign departments such as sales, marketing, and engineering.

What are the most important Web Designer interview questions?

While you screen web designers’ suitability for your project using résumés and portfolios, the interview process is crucial to confirm these assessments and to validate their soft skills—consider questions such as:

What are your strengths and weaknesses as a designer?

This question allows you to get to know candidates’ more in-depth, and it gives them an opportunity to highlight what skills they would bring to the project. Look for strengths such as the ability to balance user needs and business objectives, creativity, and attention to detail. This answer to this question will also give you a sense of each designer’s growth areas.

How do you employ a user focus in website design? Please give some examples of user research or incorporating user feedback in your past projects.

User research is a crucial resource for web design. Asking about a designer’s specific experience with incorporating user feedback can give you an inside look into their approach. Top candidates are familiar with user research techniques such as interviews, surveys, or usability testing, as well as the use of personas or empathy maps.

Do you understand the business goals for this project? Please explain your impression of our needs.

While the designer may not yet know your business’s unique goals, they should understand the general goals of businesses in your sector. The answer to this question can help you understand whether a candidate is the right designer for a particular project.

How do you go about solving design problems? Please give some examples of creative problem-solving you’ve performed on other projects.

Challenges will arise in any web design project. Stories about problems that the designer encountered in past projects—and how they overcame those issues—will give you insight into how they will manage future obstacles. This question also gives candidates a chance to showcase their use of creativity to accomplish business goals and maximize the utility and usability of the website.

How do you approach a new web design project from start to finish?

Web designers should have mastered every project phase from inception and ideation to site maintenance. Responses to this question reveal a candidate’s ability to see a project through and can provide a feel for how they collaborate and communicate during all the steps in between.

How do you ensure a seamless experience across different devices and screen sizes?

Users may access your content from various devices, and a poor experience can cause them to navigate away. Ensuring usability across devices and screen sizes is a prerequisite for web design. Designers should understand the importance of responsive design and be able to speak to their experience with ensuring a smooth experience across screen sizes.

Why do companies hire Web Designers?

A strong online presence is no longer a nice-to-have for businesses. Consumers expect to be able to access information and make purchases online. Web designers fill an important need: designing and maintaining aesthetically appealing, user friendly, on-brand websites that support business goals—paying meticulous attention to detail in all phases of development.

While staffing a web design project can be challenging for business owners and hiring managers, outlining your specific needs and goals will help you find the right designer to deliver value for your company.