When you’re ready to design your website, where do you start? The answer is a web agency. This article will discuss five reasons why professionals are the best choice for building your site, and how to find the right one for you.
Short History of First Agencies
The internet has changed everything we know about building a website. Before 2001, we could only build our websites by learning HTML and other coding languages (like PHP), or by using free content management systems (like Drupal). We would either do this ourselves, or pay someone to do it for us.
Those old models are no longer viable options when it comes to creating what we want online. Your potential customers can now (literally) see your website with just the click of a button, and they can complete their purchases without ever talking to you face-to-face.
This is a far cry from the days of building websites with tables and images, where the only people who could see them were other webmasters using the same platform.
Reasons to Hire a Professional
There are a number of reasons why your website needs to be built by professionals these days. Here’s a quick list:
- No one can see your site’s code (or “HTML”) unless you tell them what it looks like. This means no one but you can add new content to your site, which is crucial for extending or modifying it in the future. And if you want to use plugins, that requires coding as well.
- Professionals can get your site to rank high in the search engines. Many people still think that search engine optimization (SEO) is a gamble, and that it’s not worth paying someone to do it for you. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Most sites that rank near the top of Google’s results pages have been professionally optimized, because their designers know how best to set up their sites to attract qualified visitors and turn them into sales leads or customers.
- Design of a website should be both effective at converting visitors into sales and pleasing to your target audience. A good web designer knows how to build sites that reflect your business’s brand, or your clients’ brands, in an authentic way. They know about choosing the right colors, using space effectively for creating a professional look and feel, and other aspects of website design that are crucial for its long-term success.
- A good web employee should already know everything they need to know about coding, because they’ll likely be doing it while designing your site as well. But even if they don’t, they should still be able to add content to your site so you can take over once it’s live.
- Workers of web agencies know WordPress well, and if they want to create a website that looks good and runs smoothly they won’t have any difficulties doing so. WordPress is a popular CMS that is optimized for usability, and it has thousands of great themes for you to choose from for starting your site with the right look.
There are far more reasons to hire a web agency to create your website from scratch or to promote the one you have already. It is still for you to decide, yet we recommend working with professionals, like Just Web Agency and save a lot of time and money while getting to the top ranking positions.
How to Find a Reliable Web Agency
For someone unfamiliar with web design and seo, this may all sound like gibberish. As a businessperson, it can be tricky to find the right web agency. Here are some tips on how to do it:
Get the exact picture of what you want to get
Make a list of objectives for your site, and make sure those objectives are listed in order of importance. Good designers ask questions about your business and about your audience so that they can create content for converting visitors into customers or sales leads.
Always check portfolio and previous projects
Look for design portfolios (online or in person) from web designers who include client logos, before-and-after websites, and testimonials from their clients (or customers). Web designers should include their clients’ testimonials not only on their own sites, but also on the company sites where they worked (e.g. a client’s Facebook or Twitter page).
Don’t agree to the first offer
Get several proposals, and choose the one you feel comfortable hiring based on how much they charge per hour and how much they charge in total for designing your site and creating it with WordPress. This article is included here only to help you make an informed decision about pricing, but you should not hire a designer based solely on what they tell you (or promise) about their pricing structure. As a rule of thumb, you should charge your designer more than 30% more than the going rate for their services.
Calculate your budget
Give your agency an initial budget (within reason) and a timeline for when you need the site to be done. Web agencies typically split up large jobs into smaller ones, so you will work with them over several weeks and probably for several months until completion of your project. This is important; it gives them time to get to know you, build trust, and learn about how to handle your company’s needs online.
Rely on small local businesses
Find a locally-owned web agency that can bring their expertise to your community or city as well as yours. There are many web agencies out there for hire, but not all of them can offer the same degree of experience or specific expertise. For example, if your business caters to a specific niche (e.g. antique collectors), you should find someone locally who has worked on sites that cater to this type of clientele (or at least similar ones).
Collect reviews
Ask for testimonials from any web designer that you consider hiring, and ask them about the projects they’ve been involved in, what their process is like, and why they would recommend themselves to you over their competitors.
Last, but not least, try to keep in mind that your website is your first and most important marketing tool. Get the design you need from a well-designed agency that can turn your vision into reality, so you can start bringing more clients and new business to your doorstep.
Final thoughts
It’s a good idea to hire a professional website designer to help you stand out from your competitors and attract more customers. It doesn’t take long for most users to abandon your site and not come back in the future if the design doesn’t inspire them to do so. It’s also important that you hire an agency for website design who can help you get immediate results, and receive ongoing support from your web designer as well as other marketing professionals tailored to your business.