10 Questions To Ask a Prospective Web Design Agency

Choosing a web design company for your Gloucester business should not be a task undertaken lightly. There are many factors which should be considered to ensure you’re getting the best results possible from your brand, your budget and your ideas. The digital marketplace is a vicious battleground of businesses competing for the number one spot in Google, the best conversion rates and the greatest ROI (isn’t that ultimately what this is all about?). Do you and your business a favour and choose a reputable, reliable Gloucester web design agency to provide your business with the results it deserves.

How do I do this, you ask? We would always recommend asking the correct questions to find yourself a team that fits your requirements, expectations and business needs. Whether you’re a one-man-band business, a start up, SME or growing company, these are some of the important questions you should be asking.

Ask these crucial questions

You’d be surprised how many of these aren’t commonplace…

1. Are the websites you build templated or custom tailored to each business?

You should always ask web design agencies if they create unique designs or rely on pre-defined templates. This is usually (though not always!) indicated by the price point. The Web Alchemist build every design from scratch, using YOUR brand, YOUR assets and YOUR inspiration. This helps us deliver a product that actually reflects what YOU want from the project.

2. How do you check for cross-device & cross-browser compatibility?

If you’re spending a few hundred or even a few thousand pounds on a shiny new website, it’s critical that the site works across all modern devices and browsers. Some agencies have a myriad of physical devices to test on, some solely rely on emulation software such as LambdaTest. We use a combination of both, to ensure real-world compatibility with as many devices as possible.

3. Are the designs you produce CRO focused?

CRO, or Conversion Rate Optimisation, is a critical factor in website design. If you’re driving 10,000 visitors a month to your website and they have no way to contact you, you’re losing potentially 10,000 leads per month. This is where CRO steps in, optimising the user journey to make getting in touch with your business a breeze for your users. A great Gloucester web design company knows how to promote sales through design, combining creativity with marketing knowledge to ensure your website converts as many users as possible into actual, tangible leads.

4. Do you offer additional monthly marketing services?

Having a shiny new website is great, it helps your business stand out from the ocean of poor web design choices on the market. But if it’s poorly optimised, it’ll never appear in Google’s search results. All of our websites have basic on-page optimisation as standard, including meta title, description, keyword focus, heading tag structures and so on. We also offer ongoing marketing through SEO, where we optimise the website using both on-page and off-page SEO practises to boost you through Google’s rankings.

5. Do you have graphic designers who can help build a brand from scratch?

Your logo is the foundation of your entire brand. Treating this as an afterthought is a critical error many businesses make. Having a web design partner who also offers graphic design services will ultimately lead to a more cohesive brand adherence within the overall design, architecture and even iconography set. The more cohesive your branding, the more likely your visitors are to engage.

6. Do you provide post-build training on how to use my website?

Knowing how to edit your own website is vital and can save you thousands of pounds long-term. If you entrust your website project to an agency who refuse to tell you how to make edits, you will likely end up in a queue of support tickets, where every amend is chargeable (in some cases, agencies have a minimum charge of 1 hour!). At The Web Alchemist, we build all of our sites with the client in mind. We offer support and advice on how to edit your own website content, images, videos, URLs and so on. We include, in every build cost, at least 1 hour of post-build training to put the power in YOUR hands to edit your own website.

7. What do you need me to provide?

Most web design agencies, us included, want you fully engaged throughout the process. This means providing as much content, as many images and (if you have them) videos as you can. Client supplied photos paint a much more accurate picture of your business to the site visitors compared with stock imagery (we do have access to a stock image library should you need to use this).

8. How long will my website build take?

This is an important question to ask, whether it’s the build time itself or the lead time for the project, it’s important to paint a clear picture as to when the project is likely to be completed. For instance, if a project is quoted at 40 hours, you might think “that’s only a week!” – In reality, 40 hours is likely to be split over 4 weeks, and the agency may already have a 6 week pipeline of work in place. So the actual delivery turnaround is likely to be more like 8-10 weeks. However you approach this, it’s important to ascertain a realistic timeframe so you (and your shareholders, where relevant) can plan marketing spend, ad campaigns, corporate events, press releases and so on.

9. Do you include, or tie me in to, hosting?

Asking this is super important. If you’re having a website built for £500 and you think “that’s a great deal!”, make sure you ask if you have the freedom to move the hosting of this website should you ever need to. Some agencies will under-charge for a website and, in the fine-print of the contract, state that you MUST use their hosting at an extortionate rate (we’ve seen up to £800/annum in some instances). During all website design projects at TWA, we will liaise with you to ask what you want to do in terms of hosting. We can, of course, provide hosting, or we are more than happy for you to source this elsewhere if you’re not wanting a “turn key service”.

And finally…

10. Who owns the website once it’s built?

This is probably the most important question. If you’re dropping £5,000 on a new business website, you want to make sure YOU own it. We have heard horror stories of people spending 5 figures on a website (whether in lump or spread over 1-3 years) and, when trying to move the site elsewhere, being referred to a contract they signed 18 months ago saying “you do not own the website, the website is property of <agency X>”. All of the websites we build at TWA are built for you and your business. As long as there are no outstanding balances on the website build, it’s yours to do with as you wish. On a similar vein, we will never refuse administrator access to your website (again, as long as there are no outstanding balances on the build or hosting). Some agencies simply don’t allow their clients this level of access.