Why Your Business Needs a Professional Website Design Agency
With so many easy to use website building tools out there, why does your business need a professional website design agency?
In my humble opinion, there is a critical element that exists beyond the technical skill, professional expertise, and hard-earned experience that comes from working with a website design agency, and it’s called objectivity.
While no one knows your business better than you do, a seasoned website design professional can help you understand the difference between what you want your brand to communicate vs. what it actually is communicating.
But it’s not just having that understanding and being able to communicate it back to you that is important. It’s the ability to create a strategy that centers on your goals to create a website that engages your audience, communicates your value, and drives growth for your business.
When you’re doing it all on your own, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. The right website design agency will help keep you focused on your goals while delivering a top-notch product.
But how do you choose the right website design agency for your business? Here are some recommendations worth considering.
Key Factors to Consider When Choosing a Website Design Agency
There are so many different website design agencies out there, each of whom might specialize in something different. So how do you decide which one is right for your business? It’s a decision that deserves careful consideration. Here are a few ways in which you can determine which website design agency is the right fit.
Your website design agency should have a proven track record of success
Any agency should be able to provide you numerous examples of existing websites that they’ve built. Reviewing their current website work is the simplest way to understand the quality of their work.
If an agency is unable to or unwilling to share a variety of website examples with you, it might be an indication that they either:
- Have less experience in building sites, or
- Have been able to maintain long-term relationships with their clients
Both should give you pause. And when they do send you website examples, be sure to ask yourself:
- Do the sites load quickly?
- Are they building secure, HTTPS encrypted sites?
- Are the website mobile friendly?
Your website design agency’s goal should be to elevate, not change, your brand
Some design agencies might design in one very specific style. Others will be very adaptable, and use their skills to enhance your brand. My recommendation is that you choose the latter.
Unless your goal is to completely redesign your brand and it exists in perfect alignment with an agency’s aesthetic, you want to work with an agency that understands your business, has studied your brand, and is committed to refining and elevating your brand.
Your agency should be great communicators
Have you ever begun to work on a project and one of your collaborators is suddenly missing in action? It’s unnerving, isn’t it? What’s happening? Is progress being made? Did they forget?
Not only are regularly scheduled status updates important, but clear, constructive communication needs to be a foundational element of any successful project between clients and agencies.
Communication in the discovery phase. Communication throughout the build process. And communication during launch and beyond. It’s a partnership. Good partners use good communication.
Your website design agency needs to have a well-defined process
You deserve to know precisely what a website design process looks like. Your website design agency should be able to share that information with you in great detail.
A documented process, one that describes the discovery phase, the build process, the launch process, all of the respective approval processes, how and how often status updates will be delivered, what happens should the build go outside of scope — all of these things should be shared with you, discussed, and signed off on before any work begins.
This helps set expectations, prevents costly surprises, and sets you up for success. Process and documentation matters!
Your agency should build a site designed for long-term growth
I talk a lot about the importance of custom content and custom designs, and how valuable personalized assets are to your business. But when it comes to your website, I need to draw a clear distinction between custom and proprietary website platforms.
At Formada, we build custom websites using the WordPress platform, which allows us to create custom websites on a very stable, flexible, and secure foundation — one that we can maintain and refine for years to come.
It also means that if a client should ever leave us (which, of course, we don’t want to happen, but can happen), they can take their website with them and host it with another agency.
However, when you work with an agency that builds their sites on a proprietary platform, you can often find yourself painted into a corner, so to speak. Themes and plugins can become obsolete, affecting performance and security.
Additionally, unplugging from these agencies can be difficult, because other agencies may not have access to or be able to work with the site in its current state — it might need to be rebuilt entirely from scratch!
Make the Right Choice for Your Business’s Website
I believe that you should own your website. The content, the imagery — all of it. It’s yours. We don’t want to own your website, but we do want to elevate your business. We want to create strategies for you that drive incredible growth, including those related to your website design.
Your website is the hub of your digital marketing — it’s where you can engage, educate, and sell. You deserve a partner who takes the time to understand your business, your goals, and the needs of your customers, and can turn that understanding into marketing that creates growth.
This is precisely what Formada does. And we can do it for your business, too. Contact us today to learn more!