Choosing the best web design agency for your business is a critical decision, made more difficult when faced with too many choices. As the online face of your company, your website must function exceptionally well and generate the leads that your business needs. For many online visitors, your website will be the deciding factor as to whether or not they work with you.
You need to choose the website design agency that's in sync with both your current business goals and your plans for the future. Here are points to keep in mind:
In March 2018, Google implemented Mobile First indexing. Since more people perform searches on mobile devices than on desktops, Google will be crawling and indexing the mobile version of websites first, considering it the primary version of your website.
The agency you select should have substantial experience in responsive web design and would prioritize, depending on your goals, the mobile version of your site over the desktop version.
Your website should be as unique as your brand. You need to stand out from the crowd.
Your brand won't be well represented using a pre-made template or theme that's already been used by thousands of businesses before you. If a web design agency is insisting on using a theme or template, walk away. This usually means that their team does not have the capacity to create or even customize your website enough to be unique.
Your website's platform and CMS (content management system) must be able to grow and adjust to the demands of your business. Your platform should be robust, intuitive and easy to customize and use. Your website should not rely on too many plugins. More plugins mean a slower load time and a costly upkeep.
User experience (UX or UXD) and user flows are the most important factors for website visitors today. You only have a few seconds before a visitor decides to stay or abandon your site. If your website is slow, isn't intuitive, or malfunctions, they'll leave. Be sure to ask the web design company about their process of designing an effective user experience and seamless user flows.
You are not ready to compete online against your competitors until your website is optimized for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. SEO (search engine optimization) will be an ongoing and critical component of your digital marketing strategy. A web design agency that offers to optimize your website for search engines as it's being built will help your business rank higher, faster, once it's live.
Once SEO has successfully driven visitors to your website, they must be successfully converted into qualified leads. While you want a web design team to be both creative and technically skilled, you need more than a beautiful website. Your website must be a lead generating tool with integrated lead funnels.
Your agency should offer training in various aspects of your website to those who will need it. Some agencies have such limited resources they're unable to provide this necessary service. You'll need to decide whether you can maintain the website yourself or have the agency take care of all or some of the necessary maintenance.
As mentioned above, if your website is slow, isn't intuitive, or malfunctions, your website's visitors will move on. It is unlikely that a web design agency will offer a quick and cheap web design solution without compromising quality. Be sure to prioritize quality assurance over cost or turnaround time.
You should be included during every stage of the process. No one knows your business better than you do.
Finally, give the agency's website a good workout. After all, you can't expect them to do better for you than they did for themselves. Is it visually outstanding? Does everything function? Is it fast? Be critical.
We hope these tips are helpful. Choosing the right team to design your new website for your business will be one of the most important decisions you ever make.