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How to choose the right marketing agency for your business

Posted on by Phil

Like anything that involves the unknown, and when there are so many options, knowing what to look for to choose the right marketing agency for your business is no different. In this article, we will try and point out some things that may help you get to a decision you’re comfortable with faster.

There a number of ways for Growing Your Business Online That Will Actually Work, And with well over 4 billion internet users today? If digital marketing can help you engage with a fraction of this, it will play a huge role in your company’s growth.

Digital marketing can provide your business with so much potential return, so, why would you ever leave something as big as your company’s success to chance? Or why would you sacrifice your own time to learn (or try to learn) how to do your own marketing? Wouldn’t you be best doing what you do best? That’s probably why you went into business in the first place right?

Knowing how to choose the right marketing partner for your business is not an easy feat. After all, marketing companies are all pretty good at talking – it’s what they do! But finding one that also ‘walks the walk’ can be somewhat difficult. And when the growth of your business depends on finding and working with people you can trust, there’s a few things you can do to make sure you make the right CHOICE.

Choosing a marketing agency

There are plenty of ways of deciding which agency you want to work with:

  • Formal Quote or Proposal
  • Pitch for your business
  • Seeing sample/small projects up front
  • Word of Mouth – Getting a referral
  • Basing your decision on cost

As I alluded to above, Finding an agency is easy. The hard part is finding an agency that is the right fit for your business. I recommend you think about the following things before trying to decide.

Trust

The digital marketing landscape can be a bit of a minefield. It’s continually changing, so it’s natural that plans and tactics will need to change over time. Do you trust your agency to keep up, and keep you informed long the way?

Like any relationship, it won’t always be smooth, and there’s bound to be some turbulence from time to time. It’s really important, essential in fact, that you know you can communicate with your agency freely and address difficult situations. Being open to engagement feedback will help. So ask them what happens when things go wrong. Can you trust them to step up and fix and/or deliver without unexpected invoices coming your way? When deadlines are fast approaching and something’s not right, can you count on honesty, even if what they say is the last thing you want to hear?

Value

When you choose to move forward with an agency, it’s a good idea to ask them for some real-life examples of how they have helped businesses like yours. Do they have case studies available? What are their fields of expertise? Will they deliver you real value?

Transparency

Transparency relates back to trust. Pricing for example–and let’s be honest, no-one likes to talk about money–but if all the cards are on the table from the start, everyone knows where they stand. This includes the agency being upfront about charges and costs and you being upfront about budgets and what you can afford. It’s no secret that some marketing companies will tell you what you want to hear just to win your business. Be wary of this. Starting a relationship on false pretences will more often than not lead to more deception later on. You simply can’t build on a foundation of misrepresented truths.

Choosing an Agency is your decision

Size doesn’t matter

You might not be looking at being the biggest client, or the smallest, but the days of judging companies on the number of desks in their office are gone. Bigger teams don’t guarantee work will be done faster or to a higher quality.
Look into the company’s culture. Does the team communicate well, collaborate with each other internally and externally? And most importantly do they demonstrate an understanding of your vision? Do they get how important what you do is – to you!
Often, (and we hear of this a lot) the people pitching to you won’t be the ones doing the work, so we recommend you find out who will actually be working on your project. In larger agencies, your projects could be handed down to less experienced or junior members. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing–unless they use you as “practice” for the “real clients”. Would you want that?

Are Case Studies Enough?

Before you hire a new employee, you would conduct interviews and check their references. Does the same happen when you engage a marketing agency? Whilst previous work is a good benchmark, it’s not the be-all and end-all. If you’re serious about marketing your business, you should ask to speak with some of your prospective agency’s clients. Then they can tell you themselves what the agency is actually like to work with and how it has helped their business.

Price isn’t everything…

Transparency and trust are key here! It’s true that time and costs can and probably will fluctuate from project to project or campaign to campaign. This can depend on the products and/or services used in each case. The important thing to keep in mind is the open-minded communication mentioned above. If the agency has a good track record of this and the clients they have are seeing good results or ROI, then this is a good indicator – if a campaign costs you $2000, but returns sales of 5X ($10k) then the value should outweigh the price every time.

How are the agency’s own marketing efforts?

Do they market themselves well? Do you find what they do engaging and educational? ‘Practice what you preach’ is essential when it comes to marketing.

Of course, how they promote and advertise their own business should be different from how they market yours. However, if you want to know how to choose the right marketing agency for your business, you will want to know and be comfortable they can do it for themselves.

How to choose the right marketing agency

Any decent marketing person can tell you that running any marketing activity without a plan or clear strategy without some type of optimisation, whether that be SEO, defining a conversion path or CTA (Call to Action) is ultimately going to result in failure. I said it in the into, but it bears repeating, you’re an expert at what you do – that’s why you started your business. The right marketing agency for your business is an expert at taking what you’re great at, helping you develop your ideas, and turn those ideas into action. This will, in turn, help your buyers connect with you and ultimately if everyone plays their role well, will result in reaching your objectives – whatever they may be.

It’s true that marketing has dramatically changed in the last decade and if you want to find an agency or outsourced marketing department that is a good fit for your business, you just need to do your research, consider the options available to you and be comfortable that you choose what you think is the best fit for you! And to help even further (based on Google search and excluding us) here’s an article for the best marketing companies in Southland.

How can automation save you time and money?

Posted on by Phil

When it comes to running a business, there can be a lot of admin that goes along with it. So you may have asked “how much time should I spend on Admin for my business?” It’s a fair question. They say the best way to get something done right is to do it yourself. Really, the best way to get something done is to do it once, then have it automatically repeated the right way. And that’s exactly how automation saves you time–and money.

You may have heard that robots are out to steal your job. And that is a complicated topic with a lot of nuances. However, you might be interested to know that robots–or rather, automated processes–can steal the jobs you don’t want from you right now, opening you up to do more of the things that matter or that you care about doing. By automating repetitive busywork, automation saves you time, and it could be much more than you think!

How does automation work?

Automation isn’t magic. But it might look like it once it starts working! There is complicated automation using API integration, and there’s automation using logic and pre-existing software.

The basic premise behind the latter is that you set up a task once, then set rules for when it’s done. Once you get the hang of automating things, it will take a little bit of setup to get it working right, but then you’ll never have to do it again. There are a lot of different automation softwares out there. Zapier, ManyChat, and HubSpot for instance can all automate different things. While they all have different specifics, automation requires a few basic skills:

Understanding Fields and Variables

Variables are the basis of automation. In order for automation to work, variables have to be defined and then they can be used. If that sounds complicated, fortunately, most of the software does this part for you. For instance, any CRM like HubSpot will have you put in a contact’s first name, email address, and phone number. Each of those items are called fields and are used in your automation.

Here’s a quick real-world example that we use:

Our business is sent dozens of invoices from clients each month. These Invoices all have the same fields, even if they’re a different spot. They’ll have an invoice number, company name, due date, and so on. And we want to keep a record of these in our own accounting system.

With automation, all of those fields can be recognized, and then put in a format that the software can understand. So instead of having to find the invoice number, their name, the due date, and all of that, that information will be picked up instantly and typed in for us. Since we were just going to take the information and type it in manually anyway, having that task be automated saves us a lot of time!

Logic Pathways

The next level of automation is understanding logic pathways. If you can do this, then you can automate a lot more tasks! A logic pathway simply means that one action will happen if a user does one thing, and something else will happen if they don’t. And then you can have a further level beyond that to be as complicated as you can wrap your head around. So how can logic pathways help you?

Here’s a quick real-world example that we use:

We wanted to guide people who showed interest in learning about Content Creation to more resources. But we didn’t want to send everyone the same thing–we wanted to send them items that would be valuable for them. To do that, we used logic pathways.

First, we would send out our eBook, What is Content and why do I need it? If they didn’t open the email, we’d send a reminder in a few days with a link to the download. Then if they downloaded it, we could send them an article about how to make effective Facebook posts. If they never downloaded it, we wouldn’t bother them again–they may be too busy or were just curious.

If someone opened the email and downloaded the eBook right away, we’d send that same Facebook article. But if they also clicked a link that they were interested in talking with us, then a task would be made for us to follow up with them in a few days.

This entire process is automated. So instead of checking manually and calling someone who might not want to be bothered, everything is done automatically. And relevant tasks for follow-ups are only made when they’re needed!

Testing and retesting!

Automation is a fantastic helper–when it works properly. When it doesn’t–and you think it is–it can hurt more than help. That’s why testing is super important. This is especially crucial with more complex automation. We’ve been doing automation for awhile, so some of the tasks can be quite complex. Take a look at this one we’ve done for Facebook Messenger:

Facebook Messenger Automation

There were a lot of branching pathways to deal with, and if one of those in the middle didn’t work, no one would ever get to the end goal! So each of those pathways were checked, then double-checked to make sure they worked properly. Some errors were caught and fixed, then they were double-checked again.

That’s why it’s important to thoroughly test any automated tasks before relying on them. Sure, it takes time, but the time and headaches saved is worth it. Even with all of the testing, automation saves you time–especially when it’s something that you would normally do dozens or even hundreds of times a month!

Automation seems complex, how do I start?

You don’t need to start by building a multi-level pathway with dozens of steps. Start with something simple, then move on to more complex tasks.

For instance, say you want to make sure you get back to everyone who fills out a contact form on your website. You probably already get an email that you have a new submission. But you can also make it so that you get a calendar alert, a text, or a pop-up notification an hour after the submission. Then once you get the hang of it, you can move on to more complex tasks. Eventually, you’ll open up a lot of free time for other things–like things that make money!

Of course, not all tasks can or should be automated.

What tasks shouldn’t be automated?

While many repetitive tasks can be automated, there are some that still need a personal touch. Reaching out to customers is one of them. This isn’t to say that you don’t do marketing emails; far from it. But automation can go too far. Consider a scenario when you haven’t reached out to a client in 3 months and wanted to check-in with a phone call.

Automated check-in — Robocall

Hello… Barry. Our records indicate that we haven’t spoken in…. 3 months. How is everything with… Frydays Chip Shop? Please call us if there’s anything to do to help. Thank you.

Personalised check-in — Personal phone call

Hi Barry, I stopped by for some of your amazing chips this week and got to thinking, we’ve got that big race coming up next month and people from all over will be wanting some chips. I thought if we did a special campaign on Facebook we could let these people from out-of-town know that you’re the best around. I thought of a fun campaign, “Make any day a Fryday”? What do you think?

Good tasks to start automating

One of the best places to start with trying out automation is with emails. Most email clients like Gmail and Outlook have rules that can automate what to do with certain emails. For instance, if an email gets through your spam filter for “US Concealed Carry Permit” and you don’t live in the States, you can make a rule to always spam emails from that user. But some spammers are also tricky and use dozens of emails. So the next level would be to automatically Spam emails with “US Concealed Carry Permit” in the subject. You can find out more about specifics for Outlook or Gmail. From there, look into anything that is repetitive and start automating away!

Automation saves you time, money, and resources. Find out more about how we can help you with automation on our marketing automation page or get in touch today.

Is traditional web design broken?

Posted on by Phil

For anyone who has experienced the website design process, they’ll know it’s quite the journey. Sometimes it feels like you’re hiking up a mountain or even travelling to a different country – sometimes in a rowboat! You need a budget, resources, time, and you have to make all kinds of preparations for this journey to be successful.

If you have been in this situation, think back to previous website design projects you’ve been involved in. What went well? What didn’t go well? Which emotions did you experience during those redesigns?

A recent survey to more than 100 marketers and business owners, suggested there are a lot of different emotions they experienced during a website redesign. There are some positive emotions: excitement, hope, pride. But the majority of responses were negative: frustration, stress, and overwhelmed. And even… holiday. These people are thinking, “I want sun and sand and anything to get me out of here…” Kidding aside… But it is kind of true. Traditional web design is complex, complicated, and hard to understand. But does it have to be that way?

The traditional web design process is broken, and that can make it frustrating

Let’s think about what has to be done each time you embark on a website design or redesign journey in the traditional way.

Image-link-about-growth-driven-web-design-back9-creative

Before you get started

First, you need a team of experts that can join or lead you along the way. The assembled team may consist of people from your own company too, but ultimately you’ll need some outsourced marketing experts like a web design or marketing agency and/or web developers.

Next, you need a budget. You may not even know what this should be if you’ve never done this before, or you may have an idea of what you would like to spend. The average website for a small- to medium-sized business can cost between $5000 to $30,000 or even $80,000, and even more for an enterprise business. Yep, it’s a massive ball-park! You can find out more about the costs that go into a website in our article, How much does a website cost?

And just like a trip up Mount Everest or planning your dream holiday, building a decent website is a long journey. On average, it takes three to six months to build a new website. This is true even if you can plan every step of the timeline: when things are delivered, when things need to be approved, and when things are handed off to specific teams. Many times, a website project can go over budget or miss a deadline because there are so many variables.

Problems with traditional web design

Thinking about all of our previous web design projects: Were they launched on time? Did they stay in scope? Were they on budget? Often, but not always. Things happen and obstacles arise. Most web design companies have been approaching web design projects in the same way for the past twenty years. But if you take a step back, there are two systemic problems that shouldn’t be ignored.

First, traditional web design is risky for your business

Why? Because of the large upfront cost, the amount of dedicated time, energy, and resources. Then there’s also the chance the project can still go over budget and beyond its delivery date. After all of that, it’s still unclear how much the website is going to impact the bottom line of the business.

Eventually, the website goes live… And it’s time to rejoice! Finally, this long, grueling project is done and the team can return to all the other things that were set aside during the last six months while building the website. Things can go back to normal. But should they?

Now, on a scale of one to ten, how important is your website to your business? What would happen to the growth of your business if your website disappeared tomorrow? HubSpot found that marketers and business owners overwhelmingly agree that their websites are critical to the growth of their businesses.

But now, the real question…

How often do you make impactful improvements to your website?

“Impactful” is continually improving, optimizing, and building key parts of the site to drive business value. These are updates that bring in business and make things easier for customers. Blog posts and offers are good, but they aren’t necessarily “impactful”. These are changes like adding options to buy online, a reservation calendar, and so on. While all marketers and business owners agree that the website is critical to business growth, 42% make impactful improvements to their website only once or less each year.

Think about that for a second.

Your website is your company’s number one marketing asset

It’s the first place people go to get information and get a first impression of your business. It’s also your company’s number one salesperson, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to nurture people through the sales process. Instead of being neglected for years with minimal updates, shouldn’t this important asset get the resources and attention it needs to continue being a top performer?

If a website is like a team member, it too needs new goals to strive for. A staff member who never progresses and has the same skills 1 year in as they did on Day 1 is often seen as mediocre. Without updating or improving the website, it’s not performing as well as it could be. And like employees, your website might need some updated goals to strive for!

The second problem with traditional web design is that it produces poor results

There are lots of obstacles that arise during the traditional web design process. And then once it’s complete, it may not get updates to do better. It’s not uncommon to see websites that aren’t updated for months or even years–when they could be producing better results.

In considering these two conclusions–that traditional web design is one, risky, and two, produces poor results–it’s easy to see that the traditional web design process is broken. It’s not due to a lack of talent. Often there are talented people involved in a web project. It’s not due to a lack of budget, either. Even in projects that have an unlimited budget, these problems still arise.

These problems happen because of a broken playbook. The traditional way of doing web design is the problem.

As a business, the traditional web design model can leave you extremely vulnerable to project failure and often does not produce optimal results. So what are you supposed to do if this is always the way web design companies have built websites? Does this make you wonder What should you expect from a web design company?

There is a better way, and it’s called Growth-Driven Design

Growth-Driven Design is a smarter approach to web design that reduces the frustration and risk of traditional web design. Growth-Driven Design drives optimal results by learning about your visitors through data and continually improving the performance of the site. And Growth-Driven Design improves the entire company by sharing user learnings with other departments and helps users achieve their goals by using the website.

So what is growth-driven design?

Growth-driven design is a long-term website design strategy done through three main stages: Strategy, Launchpad, and Continuous Improvement. The long-term goals for the website are planned upfront, then a simple, workable website is built and launched and is continuously updated and refined. We go over the growth-driven design strategy in-depth in our article How Growth-Driven Website Design Works. Give it a read or if you’re keen to talk about how to update or improve your website now, get in touch with us and come in for a chat.

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Are you too busy to market your business? [VIDEO]

Posted on by Phil

Being a person who runs a business to business business (that’s a mouthful, no wonder it’s B2B!) I talk to a lot of business owners. And they are all busy! But a lot of them are fielding the same enquiries over and over. That means they’re spending way too much unnecessary time answering the same queries. Which in turn means they could be doing more meaningful productive work.

So how do we do this?

Business owner mindsets

There are predominantly two types of people I’ve talked to this year so far.

  1. The ones who are ready to take their business to the next level and smash some goals and;
  2. The ones who are already there. Well, actually they are split into two categories.
    1. One lot are extremely busy and don’t want to grow. Many are struggling to find people to employ, but are still pushing forward and doing what they can with the resources they have. And are still doing enough to market themselves. These proactive people are looking at ways they can actually market to potential employees – how can they attract people to our region and help service the need they are experiencing within their industry. – They understand that when building a brand their target audience and target market is not just the prospect or potential customer – but the also people they want to attract to their business – not just clients or customers are loyal to brands!
    2. The second part of the people already crushing it are the ones who think they are too busy to market because they can’t actually take on any more work. This is admirable, These people are already delivering a great product or service, and the last thing they want is to let a customer down or over-commit and under-deliver. I respect that and I feel the same way.

It is important you don’t Turn off the marketing Engine in times of Uncertainty either. It takes a long time to build a successful marketing strategy and it needs to be constantly be driving in the background.

Sales versus Marketing

We need to stop seeing advertising and sales, which is about getting more work through the door, as the most important part of the business. Marketing, which is about bringing a brand’s story to life and educating customers about their options, is just as important if not more important these days.

What if there was a way to do marketing that could actually reduce your admin and sales part of the process and save you a bunch of time? What if the frequently asked questions could be addressed before a client even contacts you? And what if your customer actually came to you with an in-depth understanding of what you offer? In this day and age, this is no longer a what-if… It’s happening right now.

What does successful modern marketing look like?

Most people make 70-80% of the buying decision before they contact a company. The most successful businesses around the globe get this. This is marketing.

Marketing is NOT about selling more things to more people at higher prices. Marketing is about providing answers to the questions your prospects or customers have. It’s about answering them honestly without bias and allowing your audience to gain trust in your brand. Marketing is not about you and your business; it is 100% about your customer. It is about educating them about your industry and it is about answering their questions and queries before they even contact you.

If you believe in putting people first then you should never be too busy to educate and help your potential customers understand your industry or what you do or can offer.

How do you educate your customers?

Educating your customers is one of the best ways to know if you’re the right fit. But how do you do that?

First of all, this is about culture. We need to adapt to the evolution of our customers. Some businesses are afraid to answer certain questions because the customer might decide they can do your job on their own. And some might decide that. But, anything they need or want to know is probably available to them online. So the question is do you want to be the one to answer them – or do you want your competitor to be? If you answer them, then you’re seen as the authority, and someone that can be trusted. And if it’s “industry secret” knowledge you’re giving out, all the better–it shows you really have their best interest at heart. Then it’s up to you to explain why it’s better to choose you then someone else or a DIY approach.

Customer behaviour has changed

Secondly, we need to believe, accept and understand that customer behaviour has changed. They now want and expect the information they require to be available.

If we can accept and acknowledge that this is the case (customer behaviour has changed) then we need to then adopt an Inbound Marketing approach. Gone are the days where trying to “get our name out there” to all and sundry. In marketing, we need to be more targeted and be developing content that will attract the ideal customer to us.

Find out what content is by downloading our Ebook “What is content?”

By creating content that directly addresses the questions your customers have, you will find in time (depending on how quickly, efficiently and most importantly genuinely you can create the content) that you will have more and more people contacting you that are far more likely to be ready to buy that in the past. This is because they are more educated – they understand their options and they in most cases have already decided they want to work with you. This is because they are already in the decision stage of the Buyer’s Journey.

Educating customers means that the leads that do end up contacting you or more likely to do business with you. That means less time wasted on quotes that come to nothing. And conversations where you find out you aren’t good fits for one another.

Inbound Marketing Recap

At the end of the day it is up to you what you choose to believe, but if you truly want to do best by your customer or prospect, then embracing an Inbound Marketing philosophy will undoubtedly help you and your business grow in the long term. Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Advertising (an element of sales) has generally always been a method to manipulate buyers, whether it be by using discounts or scarcity tactics. Inbound Marketing doesn’t use tactics or manipulation – it is about being 100% customer-centric and solving for that customer. I believe the true measure of success in business these days – and in particular, in the digital or online space – can only be measured in two aspects: Authority (do you know what you’re talking about) and whether online or in real life, the one true currency that actually matters – Trust (Do I believe you what you are saying is genuine and true?) By combining trust and authority, you’ll be seen as an expert on the topic, and get more qualified leads who are already invested in how you can help them.

Keen to find out more about lead generation?

Take a look, it’s in our book, The Beginner’s Guide to Generating Inbound Leads. Download it now!

The Beginner's Guide to Generating Inbound Leads - Cover

What to Expect from a Web Design Company

Posted on by Phil

Hiring a website design company can be a daunting task. Where do you start? Who is the best company to use? Will you see results from a new website? How much will a website cost? Should you even hire a web designer should you try and build your own website?

These are all completely valid concerns. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will have a better idea of what to expect when you engage a web design professional.

Before we go too far, it is important to understand what you are going to be getting. There are a lot of elements that go into web design. One of the most important is the platform your website will be built on. Ask prospective designers what platform they will be using to design your website. This is important to know as some predefined proprietary website platforms–like WIX and Squarespace for example–may be great for certain businesses. However, if you are looking to scale and expand your website down the track, it is not always possible without some extensive technical ability, if at all. Therefore, ask if your website will be customisable.

If you want your website to be truly awesome and be an Inbound sales tool, it needs to work for you. It should help you educate your customers, build trust, attract leads, and grow with you as your business grows. To get more than an online reference point, a custom website may be a great fit for you. However, if you’re looking to start smaller and scale as you go, then a growth-driven website is probably the best option for you.

What’s the difference between a Custom Website and a Template Website?

Before you can determine if a custom website or a template website is a better fit for you, it’s important to know the difference between the two.

Template websites

The simplest explanation of a template website is that basic framework is provided. The design and layout are set a certain way. Then you fill it in with your own content using the tools provided. Most are a drag and drop sort of a system so that essentially “anyone” can build a website. With a template, you need to fit your content (or information) into the boxes that are already there or already provided. These platforms or systems are designed with DIY in mind. So the good news is that you can get a website up and running at a relatively low cost. The pitfalls may be if you aren’t tech-savvy or don’t have at least a basic understanding of SEO and best practices. You may be throwing away your time and what little money you do spend if this is the case.

The point of a website is to help your business get found online and help you build trust and authority. It helps you Attract leads who may want to buy from you and ultimately educate these people about your industry. So if you make a website and no one can find it, it might not be of much use. Template sites are a good way to start. However, they tend to be very hard to grow long-term.

Custom website design

Custom web design on the other hand means the sky is the limit. It means your website will also be 100% custom to you and your business. No one else will have the same one! You are only limited by your imagination – and possibly your budget. Cost is often seen as the main downside of going custom. The other downside is that it tends to take a little longer to get online. This is because your design is unique, made for your needs to accomplish your goals. These two concerns can be mitigated, however, by implementing a growth-driven website philosophy.

Growth driven design is an iterative process. This means your website is built around a strategy with your business goals in mind. It’s a long-term plan that starts by getting a site launched quickly and improving it over time. A growth-driven website will not only get you online faster, but often, you will see returns faster too. Find out more about growth-driven web design here.

A good web design company will be upfront about their abilities

As mentioned earlier, there are so many options out there. Almost anyone with some technical nous can start a web design company using the likes of Shopify or Wix. There are also a bunch of WordPress templates for sale online too, which can be purchased for as little as $50 (sometimes free if you know where to look!)

So ask your potential website company what they use to build their websites. And make sure they will be able to scale with you if you plan to grow.

What can you expect for the overall web design process?

Whist the specifics may change from company to company in terms of how they operate and collaborate, we believe the key steps in the process of designing a website are:

  1. Planning and Strategy
  2. Research and Design
  3. Content creation
  4. Web Development
  5. Optimisation, Testing, and Debugging
  6. SEO
  7. Launch

Planning and Strategy

At the beginning of your project, you should meet with a design and/or web development team to help them understand your company. This will help them know what your desired goals are for your website. At Back9, this is what we refer to as our discovery and strategy workshop.

This planning phase may also involve working through Wireframes. A basic sketch outlining the site architecture. This is to see what will fit where and what you want your website visitors to do once they get to the various pages of your website.

Content Development

Content is king when it comes to establishing trust and educating your buyers. It is imperative to understand the importance of getting content right. Content tells a story, whether it be copy (text), photos, graphics, or video. A good web design company will understand the importance of content and explain it to you.

If you’re lucky enough to find a full-service agency that fits your business, then you should expect they can also produce all of your content in-house.

The Design Phase

The research and design phase is the key part of any website design. This is where the design team takes the ideas and desired goals from the planning phase. Then, they figure out how they will work, what they will look like, and how users will interact with certain elements of the website.

Web Development

Web Development is the construction period. You will have likely signed off on a prototype design before this process begins. If you haven’t seen designs at this point this should be a red flag. You should be asking some questions of the company.

The development phase of the process is very technical so there is often not much opportunity for client input. You should still expect your web development team to check-in periodically and update you on the status of your project.

These meeting times, even after the planning period is over, are important. They allow you to notify your team about any features that you may want to change. It also helps iron out any questions that you might have.

You should have enough access to your project that, if there are ever any issues, you’ll be able to spot them. It may be the case that you would rather check-in on your project when your approval is needed. You might not want to have to follow the project day-by-day. While that’s entirely up to you, you should still be able to see how your project is progressing. This is opposed to a “big reveal” at the end.

Optimisation, Testing and Debugging

A lot of the optimization required is part of the coding and construction process. However, testing is something you should expect to be involved in. The idea of testing the website is to find any issues or bugs before it goes live. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to find them. Given you know your business best, it is important you take time to be a part of this process. You should understand what you are looking for and the errors you are trying to detect. A good web design company will explain this at the start and give you plenty of direction to carry out testing.

Debugging is fixing anything that crops up and issues or errors. Many of these can be found during testing. But some you may not notice until the website has been live for a while. If you or a customer notices one of these bugs, you should have your developer sort them quickly.

SEO

A good web design company will offer basic SEO optimisation as a standard. SEO is basically all the technical stuff that helps your site tell Google that it has the answers people are looking for. There are a lot of factors when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation. A good web design company will explain this from the start. Great SEO is not a one-off silver bullet. It should be seen as an ongoing standard practice. Whilst it will come at an ongoing cost, it is an investment. You should expect this is something your web design company should offer.

Post-Launch

After your website has launched, your team should be available for crucial issues or bug fixes. There is always a chance we have missed something.. What happens post-launch often depends on the specific nature of the project. For many, the launch is the first step in a series of ongoing updates and improvements made to a site.

Assessing what kind of post-launch support you’ll need is something that should happen during the planning process. For example, your website may require ongoing support one week out of each month to continue down your roadmap. This is for performing ad-hoc updates and so on. A website is never finished and is a business tool, so this should be an option you can expect to discuss with any good web design company.

So what to expect and how to choose a website design company

Business – whether online or bricks and mortar is about one key currency. TRUST. So in saying that, the main thing you should expect from any web design company (or arguably any company you deal with) is transparency.

Choosing-a-web-design-company

As mentioned above, a website is a business tool, a sales and marketing tool, an asset, and an investment. If you expect that is the case, then a custom website is probably the way to go for you. If you don’t agree with that, then that’s fine too. In which case, a template option could be just fine for you too.

To clearly know what to expect from a web design company, you need to know what you want to achieve. Ultimately, you should expect the company you choose to know and understand that. They should also have the abilities to deliver that too. If you are in the market for a new website, I wish you the best of luck with your journey. And I hope you get just the results you are looking for.