A web design company is critical to helping you create your website, whether a non-profit, commercial or company website. That’s because an online presence can help extend your reach, and a website will help your target market learn about you. You’ll use the site to interact with your audience, attract investors or sell your products.
You need to have a good website design to appeal to achieve such goals. Thus, you should hire a web design company that should have the following qualities:
- Open-Minded
As the term suggests, they should be open to your ideas. The web design firm must first listen to how you want your website to look. That doesn’t mean they should blindly say yes to your concepts, but they should understand your wants.
When they do, they should give suggestions that enhance your ideas. They should also be able to explain whether your ideas work or might require some tweaks to fit into their process.
That’s why you must meet and discuss your requirements with your prospects. During the meeting, they should also outline the process and give a timeline to complete their project. You can also ask them questions to gauge whether they know what they’re doing.
Besides, this meeting is an opportunity to learn their process. And most importantly, you can check if they’re rigid with their concepts. Take these as signs of whether or not you want to work with this company.
- Industry Experience
A web design agency with experience in your industry is a huge plus. Their expertise should include how your industry works, its requirements and what your target market wants on a website.
For instance, you’re a lead generation company. You’d want your website to help you generate leads. Thus, you should hire a performance and lead based web design agency to help create a website that focuses on fulfilling your business goal.
On the other hand, if you hire an agency that knows very little about your industry, you might have to wait longer. Perhaps the company you’ve hired isn’t familiar with your enterprise. That can mean doing more editing on your end on top of a longer planning time.
Worse still, they can produce a generic design for your website. The design might be appealing, but it might not fit your industry.
- Communicative
Although a web design agency focuses on design, they should also have good communication skills. This quality is vital since they need to collaborate with you when you want updates to your website, for example. They should be able to relay information that would help you understand them and their design process.
So before you sign a contract with an agency, assess how well they can communicate. Know how they collaborate with their clients through e-mail, communication apps or phone. You should also check if their team is available during your working or operating hours so you can have better collaboration. And, of course, you need to know whom to contact for your feedback, queries and concerns.
- Tech-savvy
Designing a website requires the right tools. Look into the technology that your prospect will use when creating your site. Although you don’t have to learn how to use their tools, you should familiarize yourselves with what the web designers use. You can check if they have the right tools to deliver the output.
- Up-To-Date With Other Digital Marketing Services
Besides knowing your industry, a suitable web design company should also be familiar with other digital marketing services. This quality can help them design an adaptable site in a fast-changing digital age.
For instance, they should know how a website’s design affects its search engine optimization (SEO). They should design an optimized site so your business can rank higher on search engine results pages. So instead of just focusing on appeal, they’re more likely to ensure you have an SEO-friendly site.
They should design a website with the following components:
- Properly set headers (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
- Compressed image and video sizes (so they load fast on the page)
- Keyword research (to identify the most relevant keywords)
- A schema markup (to make your website more visible on SERPs)
- A responsive design (so your website can adapt to any device)
- An SSL certificate (to secure the connection between your website and its visitors)
- Calls-to-action (to help visitors take action)
These essential components are vital so your site complements the other aspects of digital marketing your business needs.
Conclusion
The qualities of a web design company can make or break its output. If they know how to listen to your ideas, communicate with you, are experienced in your industry, use the right tools and are familiar with digital marketing services, they can design a site that serves its purpose. As a result, your company hiring them will be worth it.
