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How to select the best web design agency for your business?

by James Mallorie

How to select the best web design agency for your business? I can hear many of you saying “Why I need to get a “goooood” website for my business?” Now more than ever people spend more and more of their time online. The online presence of companies becomes the norm opposed to a simple extension of a new business arm. Still many small and medium size businesses have this question. They seem to be very reluctant to spend time on and investing in the best website for their needs. The reason is that they often wonder “How to choose a right web design agency?” It might not be a difficult task if we do some homework before meeting potential web design agencies. People who have the desire for growth obviously need a website that is usable and able to attract a crowd. However website design and build can consume sufficient time and money if you fail to choose the right web design agency or the right team. The most common problems with inexperienced web agencies are irrelevant work, going beyond the estimated time and in turn burning money, lack of personal attention, lack of creativity, no additional work, and even additional cost for undefined or unspecified work that may not have been included in the original estimates. Growing Face of our business: Your website, for many users, will be the face of your business in today’s online world. It replaces your first line support and your sales team in many situations and has to reflect your corporate tone of voice; reflect brand character, be original and more obvious and push the message of what you do. Do you think your website does this? If not, this is the right place to be, keep reading and find out some crucial things when deciding how to appoint a web design agency to getting the perfect site for your business. You might like to Follow our guide below, steps to take before hiring a web design agency: Spend time on looking at the clients and portfolios of the web design agency Who have they worked for before? Check on few sample websites and see the colour combinations, catchy ideas, simple yet innovative designs and easy navigation options. One of the most important generic factors is the layout and design of the site. It must convey the aim of the business and be easily usable to the target audience. Interview the web design agency before going for the actual work Website design is all about communication, specifically communication of your brand through all the others to your audience. In order to build a site, which communicates effectively with your target audience, the web design agency must first understand what your aims are. So talk to them, get them in for an informal chat over coffee and check if they understand your business or if they have worked with other similar businesses. See if you could access a pool of talent within the web design agency but always have a single point of contact to ensure nothing gets lost in transaction. Know their Primary Programming Languages and Operating Systems It is really vital to know their technical strength. The company should be open about the languages they use and their preferential choice of software systems. The basic you should be looking for are open source PHP/MySQL and ASP.NET programming languages, two schools of code but specialism’s in each do count. They should be ready to give a technical advice that would best meet your needs and budget. Estimate the deadline to complete the project Inquire about the turnaround time for projects similar in size to your project. This should give you a fairly clear idea about their working process. If you have a hard deadline to meet, be sure you tell the designing company at this point so that they can plan accordingly. You may even want to ask about project over-runs on previous projects if any and what tolerances are in place for budget and time controls. Check whether they offer innovative ideas and designs? Research shows that most reader’s eyes will be attracted to creative design before reading the text on the page. A small, creative and intuitive design is equal to thousand words. So the web design agency should be able to give interesting and innovative ideas. While your ideas are most important in the design of the site, you should expect the web design agency to explain what works and what does not, to take the creative lead and help you achieve your goals in design. Know about their process and skills Check if the agency uses the best practices and methodologies. See if they have any industry accreditations, formal training or background education. You may want to ask how the quality of the work is managed and maintained. You can usually save money pulling your online budget under one roof so make sure that you ask about additional services they provide, do they offer any additional services like copy writing, e-mail marketing, SEO, Social Marketing etc. Will you get the copyright? Legal rights over the code, documentation and designs is called IPR (intellectual Property Rights), you want a good exit strategy once the project is complete. Make sure you get the copyright of your site once you paid in full for the project. In future if you decide to consult with any other web design agencies, you will need the rights. Many agencies (although the number is shrinking) try to keep the rights in an attempt to keep the clients, don’t fall for it. The website is live! Whats next? Check whether the agency is providing internet-marketing services like SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a backbone for websites, an experienced company should be able to offer you a variety of options including organic, PPC and social media marketing including Facebook and other social advertising. Depending on your business requirements, they should be able to create custom online campaigns, email campaigns and help you achieve maximum results from your new site. Do they have any guarantee for trouble shooting? Working with software is tricky full stop, multiple languages, systems, platforms all transferring data and an incredible rate, the best coders in the world come across bugs. Most of the companies will offer trouble shooting (bug-fixing) for a small bugs with no additional costs but usually only if this is impeding how the site should work. Make sure they resolve any “code bug” that occurs. Know that you should pay extra for any small change in the older version. So ensure that you have a preplanned sketch about the site from the very beginning. A rough guide? Ask yourself is this not “doing what it should” or “could this be improved” often bugs are improvements to the site which is additional work. Consistent help and progression into the future Ask if they provide any training to understand the web statistics, maintenance, security etc. Some agencies advise you on how to grow your online presence as your business grows. They consistently provide help on marketing your site, promoting it on search engines, adding new features, making changes, and updating you on new developments in the industry that you could take advantage of, changes that make you stand out ahead of your competitors. So what are you waiting for? Hire an efficient web design agency and be online! Born4Digital Web Design Agency in Bournemouth is dedicated not just to web design in Bournemouth but to providing creative, transparent and effective Web Design, Online Marketing and SEO Services to businesses that have a desire to increase profits by making a difference. Still have questions? Then contact us for a free consultation Web Design Bournemouth SEO Bournemouth Online Marketing Agency Bournemouth

posted on Aug 16, 2011

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