With several web design agencies to choose from, settling on one can be difficult. But when you finally select one, you form a collaborative and long-term relationship with them. A quick search will reveal several web design agencies in your local area or city, but from the list, you need to narrow down to a few.
Now review the narrowed down list again because it is time to dig a little deeper and investigate each one to make your selection. What are you supposed to look for? The process of elimination involves looking at certain factors. If they do not have one of these factors, you need to heavily consider excluding them automatically.
Follow these steps to find a strong match for your search of a reliable web design agency:
Step #1: Judge the Website Design Agency’s expertise by their own website.
The website design agency’s website offers you an insight on their ability to build an effective website.
Here are some considerations to evaluate:
- Does their website home page take long to load?
- Is their website easy to navigate?
- Does the colour scheme make sense?
- Have they used high resolution images, videos and engaging graphics?
- Does every element have its own place on the website, meaning it does not overload your senses and actually contain a good balance of content and imagery and diagrams or graphs?
- Does the web design agency have a portfolio of their work? This will give you an idea of the type of websites they have designed in the past and determine if this holds appeal to the style of website you may be desiring within your brief.
Step #2: Demonstrated Experience
How long have the web design agency been in business for? This is an important question you need to ask. However, it should be easily available on their website. They should have a team of experts, in both website design and ideally SEO. A baseline that give confidence would be experience of at least five years and over. The more experience collectively, the better.
They should also have a proven track record of the number of websites they have reviewed and designed. If they have helped websites garner a high conversion on WordPress, that is a plus. If they have reviewed more than 4,000 websites, designed more than 400 websites, and increased the conversion rate by 600 percent, its a web design agency worth having a discussion with and engaging.
Step #3: Web Design Agency Reviews
Ultimately you want to engage an agency, offering website design in Melbourne, or your local area, with a host of satisfied clients from a diverse range of industries, including your own. If the website design agency has positive Google Reviews of their customers experience this would validate not only their expertise but ultimately their customer service. By contrast a lot of negative or no reviews would equally be concerning.
Step #4: Specialisation
You need to know what each web design agency specialise in, as that will help you determine their knowledge and expertise and relevancy for your own business as your website is not just a showcase of your product and services but ultimately for most businesses needs to serve to increase your bottom line via future online marketing activation.
Here are some areas of specialisation you need to look for:
- WordPress Website Design
- Adwords Audit and Campaign Management
- SEO Audit and SEO Campaign Management
- Website Audit Service
Of course, you will have a better idea when you talk to them. Some even offer a free consultation, which you can opt for, and then decide the Web Design Melbourne agency you want to use.
Step #5: See If They Are Well-versed in SEO
The website agency you choose needs to be well-versed in SEO. A website design that is not SEO- design focused can jeopardise your ranking on Google and other search engines. It is a mistake to assume that all website design agencies offer SEO. They don’t.
When you are selecting a website design agency, this is one of the main things you need to look for. They need to create an SEO-friendly website design. Otherwise, Google will not rank it and users, if they do find your website, will likely not stay longer, but exit out of there very quickly. If they have vast experience in SEO, they will design or redesign your website to fit your ongoing SEO campaign. Importantly, getting this component wrong costs you twice to get the right website designed and built, but also costs you in lost time to actually rank on Google and attract new clients sooner.
Step #6: Review Their Blog
A web design agency without a blog does not mean they are not credible as such, but having one does give them a lot of brownie points. It would be a better choice if you go with a Website Design Melbourne agency that post blogs with useful content to its readers.It simply means that they have allocated both the time and resources to post blogs on a regular basis for the purpose of providing their clients with the latest information on their industry.
When they have invested so much in their company, they would invest in your company as well, giving it the same level of commitment and dedication, if not more, to ensure they design a successful website for you.
Step #7: Find Out if They Follow a Customer-Centric Approach
A customer-centric approach is when the website agency puts customers first. Some website design companies tend to push their agenda as their top priority, instead of focusing on achieving the client’s long-term goals and objectives. You do not want that.
After talking to the website design company, you will have an idea about the type of approach they follow. A company with a customer-centric approach looks like this:
- Invests time to learn more about your business and the services and products you offer
- Asks questions to guide you into forming a clearer picture about your position in the market against your main competitors
- Establishes your website’s brand guidelines, voice, tone, content, sitemap, and other elements
- Enquires about your digital footprint in terms of SEO, AdWords, and organic exposure online
- Asks about your current organic rankings online if you need to redesign your website and actually protect your existing rankings with the new design.
- Most importantly, they will be easily reachable, constantly communicate to you any changes or suggestions they would like to run by you before they implement them, and will continually update you at every stage of the website process.
Step #8: Ask the Right Questions
You need to interview a website agency not different as you would be interviewing a prospective new employee. You need to ask the following questions when you talk to them about your requirements:
- From your portfolio, can you tell me the websites that you feel the most proud of and why?
- What makes for a good and productive working-client relationship?
- What are the top three problems that can cause a website design project to come to a halt?
- How would you overcome those obstacles?
- What makes you better than your competitors?
- What areas do you specialise in?
- Can they refer a past client to you? If they do, you can ask them the following questions to learn more about the Web Design Melbourne Agency:
- How long were you their client for?
- What was the project you contracted them for?
- What services did they provide you with?
- Did they deliver the project on time and on budget?
- What were their greatest strengths?
- Would you contract them for your next project and if yes, why?
The answers to these questions will help you decide the website design agency you need to go with for your website design or redesign.
Bonus Step
If they provide their website design services at both local and national levels, that is a positive sign. You may want to launch your website to attract several people from around the country instead of just locally. If they have worked with businesses that target people nationally, this positions them with a distinct advantage.
Even if you are not planning to target people from across the country, you may want to in the future, which is why it is a good idea for you to hire a website design agency with both local and national experience from an online marketing perspective. They can better help you reach your business goals and objectives, which can change with time.
Your Decision
Once you have decided on which website design agency you want to go with, you can begin the website planning and design process. You can provide them with your needs and requirements and consider their suggestions as to what makes for a SEO user-friendly website. Remember that the greatest delay to any project stems from not providing all the right content and digital assets to the agency.
You should hire a web design agency if you want experts to design and launch your website. It is essential that you do your research, as choosing the wrong company can cost you in the future, as you will then have to go to the right company to make things right. Therefore, you may as well invest the time to research and engage the right agency the first time around.
