If you’re considering hiring a web design agency to handle your business’s website, there are a couple of considerations to factor in before you enter into an agreement. Here, we break them down.
At some point, every business faces the necessity of developing their own website. Presence on the web allows a firm to get much wider recognition, build a closer relationship with existing customers, and attract new users to the platform. However, if you decide to outsource this solution and hire a professional web design company, a lot depends on them. So how do you find a team that will understand your goals and deliver the best solution? Let’s find out.
How to Choose a Web Design Agency
If you want to create a unique design for your website, then you need to find a UX/UI designer that specialises in web design. Here are some things that you need to consider before making the final choice.
1. The Team’s Approach to Usability
Usability, or the convenience of using an online store, is an important factor for online business, as it affects the behaviour of online shoppers. In addition, the usability of the site affects other important business metrics, including the conversion rate, time spent on the page, and bounce rate. But, most importantly, most of these metrics also affect online store SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Learn from your future e-commerce team what approach they use to provide website visitors with a frictionless user experience.
2. Portfolio and Similar Projects
There are many different areas of business. Each of them has specific requirements for the design and functionality of the website. If you already have a vision for a future project, find out if your team has done something similar – by studying the finished project of a team from your area of business, you can find out how professional your team is.
3. How the Team Estimates the Work Results
You can ask the team about the results that they achieved with previous customers. In particular, about the rate of customer retention. If the retention rate is below 60%, this is indicative of poor-quality work. Conversely, if the rate of the website is 70-90%, then this is a team to consider.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing Web Design
Hiring a web design company is convenient, but it’s not the only way to build a website. You can find a freelancer or hire an in-house team of web designers. However, these approaches are less widely used by large companies, startups, or medium-sized businesses. To understand why, let’s look at some of the pros and cons of working with an outsourced team.
Benefits of Outsourcing Your Web Design Team
• Expertise – You can hire an outsourcing team or an individual specialist with community expertise in a specific field.
• Rational management system – Working with a specialised web development agency, you can rely on a rational and well-functioning project management system.
• Personnel reserve – Outsourcing agencies have access to a huge pool of talented professionals. Thus, they provide more developers and technical specialists with the necessary level of expertise. Moreover, companies often hire such agencies to perform certain tasks, such as creating a UI/UX design or developing mobile applications.
Collaborating with a design agency offers many benefits that you won’t find when choosing other approaches: a well-organised business flow, experience in the field with similar projects in their portfolio, and an uninterrupted development process. Hence, the majority of companies do end up choosing professional web design teams for their projects.
Drawbacks of Outsourcing a Design Team
• Synchronisation – If you decide to work with a team from another country, be prepared to face the fact that you have to plan Skype meetings in advance because of different time zones. For the same reason, company representatives cannot immediately answer your letters.
• Cultural differences – These differences may become an issue when working with an outsourcing team. Given such differences, there can be misunderstandings, which can disrupt your target deadline.
Final Thoughts
Despite some minor shortcomings, working with the outsourcing web development team is a very popular solution. Most of all, customers tend to work with outsourced teams from South America, Eastern Europe, and Asian countries, as the developers from these countries have a much lower hourly rate than specialists with the same skills from the USA, Australia, and Eastern Europe. However, the lowest price shouldn’t be the main factor in choosing the team. Communicate with the company, study their portfolio, and listen to your gut. If you do all that, you won’t be disappointed.
Related Articles
7 Business Tips for Every Entrepreneur to Survive COVID-19
The 11 Best Collaboration Tools for Teams Working From Home in 2020