Whether you are interested in launching your first website or redesigning your old one, choosing the right web design agency can make a world of difference in getting a project off the ground and building it through to fruition. Today’s modern landscape calls for websites that deliver on superb user experience, intuitive user interface coupled with speed and visual appeal. However, finding the right web design agency to deliver on your unique business goals can be daunting, given how populated the market is, which brings us to the first problem in your website project.  How do you choose the right web design agency for your business?

Selecting the right web design agency that can deliver on your business goals takes into consideration multiple factors. This guide will help give you an idea of how those factors play into your decision-making process, giving you a greater idea of how a web design agency can support your business and marketing plans.

1. Determine Your Website Goals

Before you start searching for available web agencies, it’s essential for you and your team to identify the goals and objectives of your website and how they fit into your business. Ensuring your website is fully optimized and accessible for potential customers is pivotal in guaranteeing conversions and click-through rates, nurturing repeat customers and returning business. Try establishing an idea of what your website’s functions should be, who is your target audience, how the website integrates into your business’ processes etc. 

Here are a few examples of what these functions might look like:

• Generate leads for your busines
• Sync with your CRM, like Salesforce, HubSpot, or any other major CRM software
• Link with your email marketing platform, like Constant Contact, MailChimp, or Emma
• E-commerce functionality; collect payments or donations, including subscription-based (recurring) payments/donations
• User-friendly navigation, search-engine optimized content, and conversion-optimized pages

Your website operates as an extension of your business once you’ve identified your goals, engaging a web design agency and its developers becomes easier. As you kick off your search for a new agency you can review and vet their capabilities according to these objectives. 

2. Finding and Reviewing Web Design Agencies

As you research web design agencies and engage them online or in person, your next move is to shortlist those that appear to have the best services, team structure, competitive rates that fit into your budget and portfolio - demonstrating their past work.

Three important factors to review these agencies on include experience, portfolio and client feedback. These three areas allow you to sum up if an agency can meet your goals, their standard delivery process and if they’ll be an overall good fit for your business.

Here’s a list of questions you can bake into your queries and review during your meetings:

Can I see your portfolio or a proposed mock-up of my website?

A web design agency’s portfolio is the next best way to assess their skills and capabilities. Giving you a good indication if their past productions are up to standard for your web project. Portfolios reveal creativity, industry experience, complex coding abilities, and more; allowing you to evaluate an agency not by what they say but what they actually do. Factors to consider while reviewing these portfolios include:

• Do they develop mobile-friendly websites?
• Do they follow the latest web design trends?
• Are their designs receptive among your team?
• Are they using the latest industry methods to deliver on new projects?
• Do they have experience building for your industry?

Where will my website be hosted?

After receiving a great demo reel or mockup, ask them about hosting. Most website design agencies offer hosting services for client websites. You’ll need fast, powerful and stable web servers to maintain your online products. Make it a point to ask about uptime, how much time during a specified period will the website be up, this number should be above 99% and if the site happens to go down, what is the agency’s standard response procedure, getting you back online as soon as possible.

Your next set of questions can approach cases or malware and breaches, will they take care of it or will you have to deal with those issues alone? Website servers require regular, essential updates, unfortunately, they’re not always compatible with the software being used on your website, opening you up to a world of errors. Your incoming web design agency should be able to reduce such risks while offering complete peace of mind.

Do you offer Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Another point of interest is to query about their SEO services. Sadly, many business owners become engrossed with building a great website while overlooking their SEO needs. Creating a dismal state where their potential customers are unable to find them despite launching a well-crafted website for display. Your incoming website design agency will be critical in creating great SEO driven content that tells search engines what you are about with on-page and off-site SEO, so don't be afraid to ask them what strategy may be best for your business.

What About Pricing?

In many ways, your website operates as a storefront for your business and it can prove to be costly overlooking the essentials for an online presence. The best part is that approximately 74% of businesses say user experience is vital for boosting sales, emphasizing the value consumers put on web design, allowing your company to see your web design project as an investment. With the broad price range for web design projects ranging between $1,000 to more than $100,000, it’s natural to wonder what determines the cost of web design. The most influential factors contributing to your cost will include:

• The size and style of your website
• Copywriting services
• Creating a mobile version of the website 
• SEO services
• Custom features

Depending on what phase you’re at with your business, your website needs can equally match its size. Whether your business is small, medium or large, giving you a chance to juggle your budget. For instance, a small business like a local flower shop would do well with a basic web design offer that includes a user-friendly site that can start driving purchases, quote requests, and phone calls, allowing them to enter the online market as accessible, credible and informative at a budget-friendly price.

To scale up from a small business structure to a midsize or enterprise-grade website a client would see intermediate or enterprise web design offers that would give the company the means to advance its eCommerce structure with the use of an Enterprise resource planning (ERP)  or Customer relationship management (CRM) systems and others.

Upon establishing your goals, budget and expectations you can also anticipate additional benefits from formalizing your relationship with a web design agency for your project. Including readily accessible support, legally binding contracts, and in the long term in-depth knowledge of the website along with its code and compatible software.

If you require more details on building a web project with Cloud Code Experts we can provide you with custom quote here.

Alternatives To Web Agencies

 Alternatively, there are a number of freemium website builders available for use by business owners such as Wix and Squarespace. With the cost of a monthly plan ranging from $14 - $500, these platforms allow an average person to design a site by dragging and dropping content. Website builders are designed for people with little to no technical skills giving them the independence to create user-friendly interface design, text, and upload images using a variety of templates. However, they can prove to be limited on various fronts including poor SEO, slow loading times, limited pages and professional features. 

Are Freelancers More Cost-Effective?

As you weigh up your budget and research alternatives, you might come across freelance web developers offering their services. This can be a great option for you if the freelancer can deliver on your specified goals. Freelance web developers are typically more flexible, accommodating different project management timelines and contract lengths. On average a freelancer may charge based on their location, with those overseas charging $15- $50 per hour compared to stateside freelancers charging higher rates

On the other hand, freelancers come with their own shortcomings such as failing to deliver on a project or being unable to meet your standard for deliverables. In such cases, you’ll have to determine your route to recourse, whether revision or refund. Another fallback to freelance developers comes from the nature of short term engagements, often upon completing a project clients might lose out on long term maintenance and support. 

Alternatively while hiring an agency is more expensive they usually have the manpower to handle all aspects of the website design and development project. By using a web design agency client will benefit from the collective experience of the website developer team.

Cloud Code Experts is an experienced web design agency. 

Now that you’re familiar with what it takes to choose the right web design agency for your business, we'd like to invite you to put us to the test.

At Cloud Code Experts we know what it takes to help a business grow through its online website and SEO efforts. We ensure our clients benefit from their investment by building out products that meet their goals of increased traffic, customers, and revenue. 

Ready to meet your goals? 

Request a free quote or contact us today to get started with your custom web design project!