Look at any web design agency’s website (including ours I might add) and you’ll be presented with a whole host of services on offer. Some services and products will make sense and you might know exactly what you are after, but for the majority it will be mind boggling and likely to scare off even the most IT savy. You know you need someone that specializes in web design, but that’s about it. You’ve made it this far which is great, but in terms of going any further you are stumped. All this talk of UX design, wireframes, programming language, responsive design, SEO, hosting, eCommerce etc is frightening. How do you know what they offer is right for you. You just want a website, how do you make the decision that the vast array of services they are offering is right for your project?

What do you want to achieve, not how do you achieve it

Fear not, at the end of the day and it seems a bit obvious, but a web design agencies role is first and foremost to build websites. The services they offer are simply tools, methods and variations they use to build these websites. Any credible agency will have seen it all before and will be more interested in what you want to achieve from your website rather than focus on how it is to be built. Once they have a clear understanding what it is you want, they will then consider and discuss the various approaches they have available to them with you.

Portfolio first, services second

I would even go one step further and suggest that unless there’s a particular service you are interested in, pick a web design agency based solely on recommendations and have a good look around their portfolio. You can normally tell after the first few case studies if you would like to speak with them based on what they have produced before. What they have achieved is far more important than how they achieved it.

Trust your web company

Don’t get bogged down worrying what software or language they use, of course if you have an exact requirement then mention it early on in the process, but otherwise leave it to your web company and trust that whatever they suggest will be in all your best interests.

The common questions: Rule of 4!

So you’ve found a web design company on the internet and you like what you see. You sort of know what you are after, but how it all relates to the services that are being offered is anyone’s guess.

With a fair few years under our belt in the web design industry, its fair to say we’ve heard it all before. We realised early on that with the odd exception, every enquiry we receive can be catogorized into one of the below 4 statements. Maybe you can relate to one of them and use it when appointing your next web design agency.

• I’d like a new website for my new business/interest and I’d like to speak with someone about my idea and how much it would roughly cost?
• I have an existing website, but it really needs to be brought up to date in terms of the design and functionality. Not to mention I want to cater the for 30% of my customers who use mobile devices.
• My site is working for me currently, and I have invested a lot of time and effort in to it so I don’t want a new site, but I am struggling to update it my myself or I’m not getting the service I expect from my current web design agency.
• My business would heavily benefit from a back end system to help with the daily tasks, but it would be very custom and have to be tailored around my business. I have an idea of what it should do but I don’t know where to start. Is this the sort of thing you do?