Choosing the right web design agency isn’t a simple pick-and-click affair. Your website is your company’s digital identity, the online space where you connect with potential customers, show off your brand, and convert interest into sales. It’s safe to say there’s a lot riding on your website and one misstep with design could set your brand back. Choosing a web design agency is a daunting task, but like most things in life, it doesn’t have to be.
A web design agency is your one-stop website shop. An agency like ours will take your vision from concept to launch, understanding your brand identity and goals, designing user-friendly and visually appealing websites, and making sure that sh*t works on your laptop, tablet, and phone. (In addition to the obvious services above, we also offer SEO and paid search, and content marketing packages—including things like blog writing services—both of which further enhance your website.)
The following steps will guide you through the process, making sure the agency you choose not only boasts fantastic design abilities, but are also people you want to actually work with.
Think we’ll be great partners after reading three paragraphs? Schedule an intro meeting with us today!
Define Your Goals and Needs
Anyone can build a website on the fly, but we just noted how a website is your digital identity. Don’t we always say first impressions are everything?
Building a website requires a clear understanding of what you want that impression to be. Defining your goals and needs is one way to propel you towards digital success. When looking to define your goals, you can ask yourself these basic questions to gain more clarity:
- What are the primary objectives of your website? Are you looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or improve sales?
- Who is your target audience, including demographics, online behavior, and pain points?
- What functionalities are important to the success of your website, including a booking system or an e-commerce platform?
- What is your budget and timeline?
Once the basics are covered, you’re ready to take on some more advanced goal-setting questions like: What is your brand voice and visual identity? What type of content are you looking to produce? Do you have any long-term goals that you can help establish now?
If an agency is anything like us, we’ll ask the tough questions early in the process. Trust us, it’s better to answer them now than in six months.
Research Potential Web Design Agencies
Instead of a quick Google search of “the best 10 marketing agencies,” really think about what you want—what does your ideal agency partner do and how can they help you?
The research phase is crucial. Do you look into babysitters before you let them watch your kids? Do you read reviews of a resort before you stay? The common denominator here is simple; you’re spending money and you want that money to go somewhere worthwhile.
Absolutely use Google (or Bing if you really want to) to your advantage, but consulting industry directories is another great place to find agency leads. Social media also lets you explore an agency’s personality, design style, and recent projects. And you can’t go wrong with the old word-of-mouth strategy, checking in with industry colleagues or folks in your network to see if they have experience with an agency they could recommend.
Evaluate Their Expertise and Services
We’ll let you in on a little secret—a web design agency worth your money isn’t just about content and design (and coming from us on the content team, that’s saying a lot). Truth is, web design is just as much about the technical expertise as it is the fun aesthetics.
An agency will have a portfolio on full display, whether that be a photo gallery, blog, or case study page. Dive deep into their past projects and look for work that resonates with your industry—if you’re in financial services, look for an agency that thrives in marketing for financial advisors. Not only that, but look for work that tackles the needs of your business. Not all agencies offer the same range of services.
Be critical. If you’re about to trust an agency with your brand, make sure they’re worth it.
Check Their Reputation and Reviews
Do we really have to remind you of the power that online reviews hold? Sure, you might come across the occasional overreaction airing their grievances because they just want to be heard, but online reviews are actually a good way to gauge a company’s reputation.
Think Yelp and Google My Business, where you can read through client testimonials. Positive reviews highlight an agency’s strengths in communication, design expertise, and project management. Negative reviews can be valuable indicators of potential shortcomings, but the key is recurring themes. If a commenter is upset because the agency owner failed to answer one email within ten minutes of it being sent, that’s not a reason to discard said agency. No one is perfect, so don’t expect perfection.
Evaluate Pricing and Value
This may be the most important section in this entire blog. And most likely not for the reason you think.
You must look at the price tag of a web design agency, but you must also look beyond it.
We’ll explain.
You know your budget and how much you can reasonably afford. A good web design agency also knows what they’re worth. If your budget doesn’t match their price for service, then the economics of a potential deal simply won’t work. And that’s fine. But here’s where our second point comes into play. You must look beyond the price tag, meaning the cheapest option isn’t always the best.
And here’s why.
A cheaper agency might sell you on a “custom” website, but more than likely will build your website from a pre-built template. They won’t do the necessary digging to get to know your brand and your specific services. Sure, they have a lot of experience in designing dentistry websites, for example, but every dentist office is different—different mission, staff, service offerings, clientele, city. Everything about you is different from the other guys.
You also might not get the level of service you deserve. You’ll have an account manager whose job it is to report the work being done. But if you have questions on the work, they might have a hard time answering them because they’re not well-versed in design. With a good agency, while you might pay a bit extra, you’ll have the designer and even the owner sit in on meetings to help answer questions and eliminate any concern.
Here’s your best bet: Understand the scope of the work you want done, compare pricing options for various agencies, and if you can afford it, be open to paying a little more for a high-quality agency with great value.
Consider Their Support and Maintenance
Great, you found an agency and they built you a killer website. But what about the maintenance and support?
See, our clients love the websites we design for them but tech is funny and bug fixes and minor adjustments are needed. We jump in and take care of the site maintenance, supporting clients with what they need. Make this sometimes overlooked detail a priority when considering an agency to partner with. It will make a difference if a problem does arise.
So, What Do I Do Now?
It’s a question we hear all the time. We’d love for you to join us, but we also want this to be the right fit. That’s why we have evidence that just so happens to come in the form of something we mentioned earlier—case studies.
We’ll start with Lady Jaye, a smokehouse restaurant in Seattle. We redesigned Lady Jaye’s website to be a virtual storefront, bringing easy navigation, great photos, and most importantly, personality to show off the restaurant’s menu, atmosphere, and events. (We also made sure the website is easy to find on search engines so more people can visit Lady Jaye.) Go ahead, check it out here!
For a cannabis client, Ember Valley, we adjusted the website’s color scheme to appeal to a gender-neutral audience, as opposed to the previous masculine look the website had. We created individual webpages for each strain Ember Valley offered and enhanced the copy to include plenty more detail for cannabis connoisseurs to enjoy. And of course to drive more sales, we integrated online shopping through existing platforms, like Weedmaps, allowing users to directly purchase products from the website. Take a peek here, we’ll let you be the judge.
Before we share our last web design case study for this blog article, we implore you to read all the case studies on our website here to entice you further to call. But, we’ll leave with you one more just because.
In our ongoing work with the Maui Ocean Center, we identified several areas for website improvement to enhance the user experience and achieve the Center’s goals. We’ve updated the backend of their website for easier updates and more fresh content. We’re also strategically integrating calls to action (CTAs) throughout the website to give readers clear directional purchasing cues, and implementing user behavior analytics to gain valuable insights into how visitors interact with the site. And if we do say so ourselves, their website looks pretty great.
Schedule a call with us today. We’d love to talk about your web design.
