Any Recommendations on Hiring a Web Programmer?

[Gugel]

I don't know if this is the correct forum to post this in. If it's not, please move/delete it.

Anyway, since 2+2 is my resource for pretty much everything, I figured you guys can give me some advice on how I could go about hiring a talented and motivated web programmer for my company.

So, do you guys have any companies/web programmer friends you can recommend (NYC preferred)? They'll be responsible for creating an e-commerce website, maintaining it, and doing some search engine optimization.

Thanks.

[JoshK]

Keep in mind SEO and programming are completely different things it may be hard to find somebody that can do both, and do both well.

[SanONeill]

You'll also want to separate out designer as well since 99% of designers can't code for [censored] and 99% of coders have horrible design skills.

[BradleyT]

My last job equals your job description 100%. Now I'm doing e-commerce on my own.

I was somewhat lazy though (and my computer blew up mid-way through implimenting my site) so I just got my store online this week. I UPS'd my first two orders today so I guess that makes me a true ship it holla balla.

Just some random things.

Boxes are expensive. Luckily there's a large packing supply company (Associated Bag) a few miles away. I'd hate to pay shipping to get my boxes as it's already expensive enough paying $.67 - $1.50 just for a freaking folded up piece of $.05 cardboard.

Shipping is expensive. I guess I never really paid much attention to shipping costs as I always order from Amazon or Newegg who both either lose money on shipping or have extremely steep discounts (the latter is probably more true). Shipping 1lb boxes will cost you about $9. Don't be suprised if many of your competitors have flat rate $4.99 or $5.99 shipping that you'll probably want to match.

Tape is expensive. I went to office max and 6 rolls of tape for a tape gun is like $25 - wtf?

PPC can be expensive but it's pretty much the only way you're going to get traffic at first. Get Perry Marshall's book, "The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords" off Amazon.

SEO will take time. Don't get mad at your SEO guy if you don't rank well (especially for general widget terms) for weeks or even months after initially opening your store. Work on getting incoming links and the traffic (and higher SERP results) will follow.

Get an 800 number as this is a huge trust builder. You don't have to be tied to it 24/7 just have a message that says, "Thank you for calling XYZ, we're currently helping other customers please leave your name, phone number and a brief message and we'll get back to you as quickly as possible. Thank you."

Getting your first order is an awesome feeling. Some guy 800 miles away finds your website and trusts it enough to whip out the credit card and order. Actually my very first order was through my 800 number but same diff.


That's about it for now. As you get closer to the process or into the process and have any questions feel free to post them here and myself or someone else into e-commerce can answer.

[Slacker13]

[ QUOTE ]
You'll also want to separate out designer as well since 99% of designers can't code for [censored] and 99% of coders have horrible design skills.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. Most designers won't even add the basic tags to yur site such as keywords and descriptions.

There is a lot of effort that needs to go into good web design and making a site popular to search engines.

I have 78 domains that point to my main site.

Many people do not know this but a large percentage of web users type a domain directly and many of those misspell what they are looking for so it is very important to have as many domains as possible related to your product/service/business name etc... It is also important to have misspelled domains relating to your business that forward directly to your site.

The best way to get your site noticed is to exchange links with .EDU websites. This will get you number one in Google.

[jason6633]

I would recommend taking a look on rentacoder.com or getacoder.com they are great resources. Perhaps checking out your local craigslist as well.