Whether you’re a new business owner or in the marketing team of a large company, choosing the right website design company is a step critical to ensure you achieve your online goals.
These days, there is a wide range of website design services available. This can make the task of finding the right company seem quite daunting. This guide is designed to help you choose the right website design agency for your business.
Define your goals
This is perhaps the most important factor for choosing the right company. Knowing what you want to achieve from the website design process, will help you decided which company is the most equipped to achieve it.
For example, if your goal is to increase sales, increase online enquiries or improve your websites ranking in Google. It would be best to look for a company that specialises more in the marketing side of things. If the goal of your project is to create something that amazes people, it would be important to deal with a company that specialises in the branding side of website design.
Tip: make a list of goals that you wish to achieve, evaluate agencies based on experience achieving these goals.
Refine your budget
With a strong set of goals defined, you must consider how much you are willing to invest to achieve these goals. For those who are aiming to increase sales, you must keep in mind, anyone who is good at something will often be a lot more expensive. The agencies who specialise in conversion optimisation, search engine optimisation and digital marketing will often be a lot more expensive.
This is because they will spend a lot more time on the small things that most people overlook. In addition to this, they are often fully aware that even with the higher price tag, their clients will be in a betternet financial position due to the increase in sales from their services.
On the other hand, if your main priority is creating an unforgettable website that amazes visitors, you are faced with the challenge of finding the right agency that can bring your vision to live. Fancy websites take a lot longer to design and require far more work. If the agency is cheap, it may not end up looking the way you hoped.
Evaluate their Approach
A quality website with an accompanying digital marketing strategy can provide great financial benefit to your business. A website will need to be designed to help achieve your business goals. It is important to elevate the website development agency based on:
- How the proposed website will reach your business goals. Eg. Increase sales, improve ranking, generate more traffic, higher quality leads etc.
- What sort of contingency planning is involved,eg. What happens if the website is hacked?
- What sort of support do they supply, how much does support cost?
- How long the design process is?
- How much input you’ll have in the design.
Website Management & Maintenance
When you’re planning the website development process for your business, it is very easy to forget about website management and maintenance.A website requires regular software updates and changes. Depending on your business, you might require frequent changes to the website.
It is important to ask the designer about ongoing maintenance and ongoing support. Import questions to ask are:
- Who will be managing my websites content if I need to make a change?
- How much do changes cost?
- What is the average turnaround time for changes?
- Can I manage the websites content myself?
- Do you offer content management training?
Check out their portfolio
It is also important to investigate your potential website developer’s portfolio. This will give a good indication of the quality of work that they can produce. It will also give you insight into the type of companies they have worked with in the past.
If they have worked with similar companies to yours, they might have some insights into what works well, and what doesn’t. Any website designer or digital marketer will tell you that things don’t usually go as expected, and there can be some surprises in the process. Experience in similar industries means the designer is usually prepared for unforeseen challenges.
One thing to keep in mind, is website design involves personal preference. Just like your taste in food; what you like, someone else might hate and visa versa. Even though you might not like the websites in the designer’s portfolio, you should evaluate what the clients says about the website.
Ask if the designer has testimonials or references you can. The key to a successful website development project is being happy with the result. Make sure the developer has a proven track record for customer satisfaction.
Summary
Choosing the right website designer can be a bit of a challenge.However, it is important to do your research, as the right designer can have a great impact on your online success. Be sure to take the time to do adequate planning and research. Spend time thinking about your goals, and what your desired about comes are.
Then think about how much you’re willing to spend. Start contacting website developers and evaluate them on their approach and portfolio. With this approach you’ll be sure to find the right agency to meet your needs.
