When building your business website, you usually consider many aspects, such as the cost, the quality, the delivery time, the after-sales, etc. Hence you’ll always be keen to choose the right web design agency from the beginning & not bounce between agencies & lose both your time & cache. In this article, we’ll present four questions you shall ask yourself & your web design agency before starting a project.
What’s your website’s primary goal?
I consider this the most critical question to determine the best agency from day one. Working with many customers in the web design market, I can find the goal is missed on many occasions before & during the project.
For example, if you are building a website for your corporate, most probably, it’s made for marketing purposes as an online presence. But, on the other hand, if you are building a website aiming to profit through it, such as an advertising platform, a directory, a classified ads website, Or an e-commerce website, then your primary goal here is not only marketing but also profitability.
Knowing that web design agencies are different & each one of them has its strengths & weaknesses, keeping your goal in mind will let you give the right weight to each strength at your web design vendor. For example, for a corporate website, there shall be no compromisation on the design aspect, as the website’s goal is to present your business in a presentable, attractive & selling way. So, in this case, you CAN NOT depend on ready-made designs or templates & you should see a strong design portfolio of the chosen web design agency.
What’s the complexity of the project development?
For each web development project, only web developers know a certain level of complexity. So I’ll also help you pick the right web development company.
Ask yourself these questions about the project:
- Shall your website include user registration & login? If yes, why?
& please consider if only user registration is necessary for your business, then do it. If only you want to collect data about your website visitors, you can use an email subscription instead. - Shall your website integrate with other management systems, such as your ERP, CRM, or HRMS?
- Shall your website users have the ability to upload their content?
(Such as in cases of a classified ads website or a business directory) - Would your website have an online payment at any point?
- Shall your website have multiple direct types of users, such as sellers & buyers?
- Could your website include any automation actions, such as automatic emails that shall be sent to users when they do specific actions, like online purchasing?
- Shall the website be connected with a mobile application & will it be managed through the same dashboard?
These are the most common questions website development companies ask to determine the size & complexity of each project. If your answer to most of the above questions is yes, your website development will require an agency with a solid development background. For example, I worked before in online payment solutions, can develop your website to be integrated with a mobile app or management system, etc. In this case, the website development cost shall be increased; & take caution here, in case you found the price relatively low compared to the number of features listed above; that might be a scam or a ready-made code that will NOT solve your problems.
Do you want your web design unique?
During the past few years, the dependency on ready-made web design templates increased dramatically. It might be a good solution for the time. But take caution. Once you apply the template to your website yourself, you’ll find it hard to reach the same neatness using your website content. Usually, templates are built depending on the standard structure of content. While in real life, every company has its content structure.
Web design agencies have two ways of building a website design.
- Use a ready-made template & customize it to your content.
In this case, ensure that your website is cheaper than the usual market price. If the price is reasonable, you’ll find the web design agency trying hard not to increase the project time with communication & amendments. Considering that you have chosen a “ready-made” design & you’ll not receive a website that fits perfectly on your business, but the uniqueness is compromised for the sake of cost. - I am building the website design from scratch.
Using a photo editing program & experienced web designer (or UX designer), a web design company will deliver a 100% branded unique website design that you can edit as much as you want. In this case, you’ll receive a unique, well-crafted website for the correct cost.
Choosing between the two different services is a business decision. You shall ask yourself, is it the cost or uniqueness I’m after.
What’s your marketing plan for the website after launch?
In case you decide to give the job to a particular web design company. You shall consider their abilities in web development of a “Search Engine Friendly” website. Meaning they know the right techniques to build a website that Google loves. Google sets many rules for the right coding that lets Google robots understand your website.
Also, you must receive a content management system that you can update the website through, including all-important “search engine optimization” elements in the pages, such as Title tags, H1s, Meta descriptions & keywords. These elements at least shall include in the content management system you’ll receive.
Conclusion
We shall accept that we’ll not gain all that we need under the exact cost while choosing a web design agency. You shall be clear about your requirements & what you are ready to compromise. Then try to take the best deal within your budget depending on the above comparison criteria.
