What To Know Before Hiring a Design Agency

The Nitty Gritty of Website Design

Let’s face it – digital marketing is at its peak in the business world. Companies are competing for the best website design, social media, and overall online presence. Companies aim to have a strong impression with their online identity and often times this will require a creative design agency to step in and help get the job done effectively. When designing becomes a priority, how do you know which agency to hire?

The creative design industry is booming with talent and teeming with promises of renovating your look, maximizing functionality, and providing you a strong brand identity. How do we choose who’s best?

What Does a Design Agency Do?

All agencies want to give you the best design, but there are a number of consultants who specialize in specific assets you’re looking for, so let’s take a look at how to choose the best one for your business.

For the most part, designing websites is the foundation for these consulting businesses as they are experts in helping you define your online identity. Agencies will want to know everything about you so that way they can narrow down your target audience. In addition to the designing aspects, it is important for web designers to maximize efficiency and the users’ experience.

Businesses (clients) often run into the issue of focusing on the aesthetics and subconsciously veer away from the business goal itself – to attract customers and turn these leads into conversions. Remember that your web design agency may be focused on the creative design aspects, but you must have SEO (search engine optimization), a social media presence, and a blog with great content in order to achieve success. While the design is paramount, so are your overall marketing strategies.

This is why it’s important for you to be able to determine what it is you need – a website design makeover or just better marketing tactics? Or both. Creative design agencies are experts in the former.

Nevertheless, when you’re looking for outside help, you have a number of factors to consider. These issues will need to be broken down, addressed, and clarified in order for your agency to achieve what it is you’re looking for.

Know the End Goal

Dig deep into what the purpose of your business is. You need to provide your design team with a clear image and vision of what you aim to deliver. You’ll also need to troubleshoot what you’re unhappy with if you have an existing website that is proving unworthy – do you want to improve the user experience? Is your bounce rate high and when does it occur during navigation? How does it look across different interfaces – do people get frustrated when viewing it on their phone?

Make sure your design team is going to learn everything about your company, from the staff to the target audience. Understanding how you work, your successes and failures, and your overall operations are important for their success.

Stay Within Budget When Hiring a Design Agency

This often simplifies the shopping around process for a design agency. Know what you can afford to spend, while being sure that your other marketing strategies won’t suffer. If your design agency concentrates on more than just the aesthetic elements, see if they can keep your blog looking fresh, your social media channels compelling enough to attract more customers, and ensuring the platform, widgets and data backup stay up to date. All of these should be factored into your costs. If it’s more than you want to spend, you may be able to turn to your current staff and identify what other skills are present so you can spend a little less on outside services.

The Staff

Just like when you hire an employee to join your team or you feel out the way a new customer operates, you’ll also want to ensure your prospective design team is a great bunch of people to work with. Why? Know that you’ll be spending a great deal of time with them and communication is key. 

The professional relationship should be a positive experience. It should give you confidence and you should always feel your needs are being heard and met.

Check Who You’re Working With

It’s better if you don’t do a simple google search and run with the first one that pops up. Do a little research and ask for references. See how they’ve done on previous projects and how they worked with previous customers. This goes a long way in making sure you didn’t make a mistake in hiring the wrong team.

Services

Does the design agency use the latest in Martec (marketing technology)? What is their overall success rate with the technologies they offer? Are you concentrating on just the aesthetics or improvements in functionality too? Do you need someone skillful in both user interface and user experience, or just one or the other? Find out which agencies are best at the exact changes you need made.

Always Check Location When Hiring a Design Agency

Often this gets overlooked, because you don’t know every staff member you’ll be working with. Different time zones may be involved and you’ll want to be sure communication doesn’t suffer as a result of geography. At times the prices may be better but the frustration of an unreachable contact may not be worth it. On the other hand, if they’re willing to keep your hours, this can be the solution you’re looking for!

Interface     

These days, your website must look consistent across all interfaces – desktop, smartphones, tablets, mac or PC.

In conclusion, doing the homework before hiring a design agency can streamline the process and make your experience stays hassle-free. Consider these variables when interviewing your prospective creative design agency so that you feel confident that they’re the one to help you achieve success.