When thinking of 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 keen to choose the right web design agency from the beginning & not bounce between agencies & lose both your time & cache. In the below article we’ll present 4 questions you shall ask yourself & your web design agency before starting a project.
1- What’s your website main goal?
I myself consider this as the most important question that can determine the best agency from the 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 built for marketing purpose as an online presentation. On the other hand, if you are building a website aiming to profit through it such as advertising platform, like a directory or a classified ads website, Or an e-commerce website, then your main 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 for each strength at your web design vendor. For example, for a corporate website, there shall be no compromisation on the design aspect, as the goal of the website 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 obviously a strong design portfolio of the chosen web design agency.
2 – What’s the complexity of the project development?
For each web development project, there’s a certain level of complexity, only web developers know. I’ll help you determine it as well so you’d be able to 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 email subscription instead. - Shall your website include integration with other management systems, such as your ERP, CRM, or HRMS?
- Shall your website users have the ability to upload their own content?
(Such as in cases of a classified ads website or a business directory) - Shall your website have an online payment at any point?
- Shall your website have direct multiple types of users such as seller & buyer?
- Shall your website include any automation actions, such as automatic emails that shall be sent to users when they do certain actions, like online purchasing?
- Shall the website be connected with a mobile application & will 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 on most of the above questions is yes then your website development will require an agency with a solid development background, for example, worked before in online payment solutions, can develop your website to be integrated with a mobile app or management system, etc. At this case the website development cost shall be increased, & take caution here, in case you found the price relatively low in comparison to the number of features listed above, that might be a scam or a ready-made code that will NOT solve your problems.
3 – 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 time, but take caution, Once you try to apply the template to your website yourself you’ll find how hard it is to reach the same neatness using your own website content. Usually, templates are built depending on the standard structure of content. While in real life every company has its own content structure.
Web design agencies have 2 ways of building a website design.
- Using a ready-made template & customize it on your content.
In this case, make sure that your website shall be cheaper than the usual market price. In case the price is reasonable you’ll find the web design agency trying hard not to increase the project time, with communication & amendments. Take into consideration 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. - 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 have the ability to edit it as much as you want. In this case, you’ll receive a unique well-crafted website for the right cost.
Choosing between the 2 different services is totally a business decision, you shall ask yourself, is it the cost or uniqueness I’m after.
4 – What’s your marketing plan for the website after launching?
In case you are deciding to give the job to a certain web design company, you shall consider their abilities of web development of a “Search Engine Friendly” website. Meaning they know the right techniques to build a website that Google loves. Google set many rules for the right coding, that lets google robots understand your website.
Also, you must make sure to 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 description & keywords. These elements at least shall be included in the content management system you’ll receive.
Conclusion
We shall accept the fact that we’ll not gain all that we need under the same 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.
