Your businesses' website is the heart and soul of your online presence. Developing a new website is a substantial investment that you'll be tied to for many years, so it pays to do research before picking a website design agency that is right for you.
That said, many businesses focus their search solely on finding an agency that can design a beautiful website. While website design is certainly important, it is far from the only factor you should take into consideration when choosing a new website design agency.
Here are the top 3 questions you should ask in your search for a new website design agency:
- Will my company own the website?
- Can my company make updates to the website?
- Is the website built with Google Search Optimization (SEO) in mind?
First, will my company own the website?
It is becoming very commonplace for a website design agency to offer to lease a website to a business. At first glance, this can seem like a great and low-cost option. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t understand the negative impacts that leasing has.
If your business leases a site from your web design agency, should you ever want to move away from that agency you will not be able to take that website with you. The same is true if your website is built on a platform like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, or others. These platforms require a monthly payment for your site in perpetuity.
In order to protect your business, you should choose a website design agency, or a platform (like WordPress for example), that allows your business to own your site. While this may result in a slightly higher up-front cost it ultimately protects your business and allows you the freedom to change agencies should you find your current agency is not up to par.
Second, can my company make updates to the website?
Developing and designing websites requires a lot of expertise. That said, making small edits to your website should be easy! If you have to email your agency to make small edits to text or images on your site, you will not be as flexible as you need to be in today's online environment.
Why is this important?
Let's say you are an e-commerce site that sells shoes, and you decide to have a 20% off flash sale. If you didn't have the chance to discuss this sale with your agency, you will have to contact them and hope you get a timely reply. Whereas, if you have the ability to update your website yourself, you could have this sale active within minutes!
Making simple edits to your website is something that any website development agency should allow you to do. If the agencies you are speaking with do not offer this option, we encourage you to continue your search.
Third, is my website built with Google Search (SEO) in mind?
While it’s important to have a great-looking website, if Google can’t find the site, the design won’t do much good. Unfortunately, most web design agencies only consider website design in their process. This can prevent your site from being optimized to show up in Google Search Results.
SEO best practices are constantly changing. If your agency is up-to-date on these, like Google's latest Core Web Vitals update, they can ensure that the SEO fundamentals of your site are optimized properly. Choosing a web design agency that isn't familiar with SEO will ultimately result in frustration and having to find another agency to re-build key elements of your site to make sure it can be found by Google.
Partnering with an agency that specialized in website design, development and SEO will ensure your site looks great, performs properly, and attracts high-quality traffic.
Final thoughts
Choosing the right website design agency is an extremely important decision. The right partner can set your business up for success. The wrong partner can prevent growth, innovation, and long-term flexibility. We hope that asking these three questions will help you find a high-quality agency that provides you with peace of mind.
At TechArk we have successfully designed over 500 websites that are fast, easy to update, and built for results. If you would like TechArk’s web design and SEO experts to take a deep dive into your website, contact us for a complimentary website review.
