You may have to learn how to find out who designed a website for many reasons. Perhaps you’re a web designer looking for ideas from well-designed websites or a business owner gaining insights into industry trends by knowing who designed your competitors’ websites.
No matter who you are or what your intention is, there are some ways to go about the process. We will share each one of them so you can identify the individual designer or a design agency in no time.
Why Look for the Designer a Website?
Both the design and content of a website determine its credibility. The legitimacy of a website is commonly assessed based on its user experience design.
When it comes to sales, a credible website can greatly impact the conversion rate by turning visitors into paying customers. According to a Stanford study, about 75% of a site’s credibility depends on its design.
If you come across a website with a visually appealing design that aligns with your business, you might be interested in finding out the designer behind it so that you can hire them.
You may need to hire a professional to design your website (even if you know how to build one yourself):
- In case you are pressed for time to create your website
- In case you lack experience in building a website
- If you’re not sure about how to achieve real results with your website
- If you want your website to distinguish itself from the competition
A website design agency with a proven track record of creating successful websites for businesses like yours can be a valuable asset. It is only natural to seek out their services after discovering a well-designed website.
How to Find Out Who Designed a Website?
1. Use Search Engines
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Bing may give you the names of the key persons behind the website, including the designer when you try the website address as the search keyword.
Look what we got when we Googled the keyword – watsonmedia.net. The SERP showed their location, accreditation details by Better Business Bureau, and an excerpt from the About Us page.
What’s more, if a website’s design stands out for its individuality, there must have been several blogs written to praise and acknowledge the designer. If that’s the case, a quick Google search will lead you to the right designer.
2. Check the Source Code
You may have not heard of this but many designers love to include their names in the code. Don’t worry, they make it easy to find and add their credentials near the beginning.
To inspect the code of a website, simply right-click anywhere on the website and select the option to view the source code (e.g. View Page Source or Inspect)
Then go through the HTML code to find meta tags, comments, or mentions of the designer.
3. Use humans.txt
Google, Flickr, and numerous grassroots web developers have adopted Humans.txt as the industry standard. It serves as a means to acknowledge the individuals behind a web design and the tools they utilize. All the information comes in a ‘.TXT’ format data file.
You can discover the availability of humans.txt on websites with a browser extension like http://humanstxt.org or http://google.com that displays an icon in the address bar. You need to simply click the icon to view the humans.txt file.
4. View style.css
This method mainly works with WordPress websites but you can also try it on other websites.
Here we named WordPress in particular because it showcases the theme creator’s details for every website created on the platform in the “style.css” file.
This is a recommended way for WordPress to give credit to the creator of the site.
It is highly recommended to fill out that information in WordPress as it is used by the system. To locate the file, simply search for “style.css” in the source code.
You can locate the complete URL for the file within the website code and access it either by clicking on it or copying and pasting it into your web browser. At the beginning of the file, there is a section containing a plethora of details.
How to Contact the Website Authority to Ask for the Designer or Developer?
Should all other alternatives prove unsuccessful, it may be wise to reach out to the site owner. Usually, a contact form or email address is available for inquiries.
Explore findcreators.io
The website findcreators.io showcases the creators of any given website by simply entering their address in the search bar. This convenient tool operates directly in your browser, eliminating the need for any downloads. Simply type in your query and press enter.
However, the tool has a limitation since it is designed to primarily locate creators across all industries instead of solely for websites. As a result, the search result may not always be sufficient to identify the specific creator of a website.
Utilize the Whois Tool in DomainTools.com
Whois is a fantastic resource for obtaining domain and website details. Although registration is not mandatory, there are additional membership levels with different sets of services that users may choose to use.
If the findcreators.io website doesn’t have the creator’s information, try using a Whois lookup – it could solve the problem. Keep in mind that the owner’s name or the creator of the website may be withheld for privacy reasons.
This is a WhoIs result sheet that provides a detailed breakdown of the registrar’s name, status, and domain registration, as well as the history of IP, registrar, and hosting, among other essential information about the website – reddit.com.
Inspect the Company Portfolio
Utilizing Google and other specific keywords, it is possible to uncover potential portfolio information like the name of the owner of a website.
Whenever a project is included in a website’s portfolio, Google indexes and presents it in search results for appropriate keywords.
You may use Google to search for a company’s portfolio by inputting the keywords “company name + Portfolio” or “website URL + Portfolio.”
Monitor Social Media
In some instances, the website owner may not have all the necessary information on their website and instead, they may provide links to their social media profiles, such as LinkedIn or Instagram.
Exploring positions within the company like “graphic designer” can also connect you with the designer and their other projects.
Use Squarespace Source
If websites are created in the Squarespace platform, you can find their key information simply by right-clicking and choosing the “View page source” option.
Squarespace websites are the only ones that can provide additional information, such as the publisher’s name or source of an image.
If the website was designed by a contractual professional you may find their information as well.
Domain Owner vs. Website Owner
In most cases, the domain owner and the website owner are the same but this is not always the case.
A company’s website is typically owned by either a partnership or corporation, while domains are often registered under one individual.
Once a domain is registered, there are usually several contacts linked to it, such as the Registrant, Admin, Technical, and Billing representatives. The Registrant contact is responsible for the domain’s legal ownership. Sometimes, domain registration services retain ownership of your domain.
Bottom Line
Now that you know how to find out who designed a website, we think you will be able to identify the designer in a matter of seconds. Just remember that in certain situations, the owner may prefer to maintain the confidentiality of personal information. In these instances, it’s important to be respectful and refrain from overstepping boundaries and acknowledging the owner’s right to utilize privacy measures on their website.
