Hired Guns - Working with a design Agency
Ok, this may not be a true "marketing" article, but your site itself is a marketing tool
and if designed poorly your business will suffer. Many businesses choose to hire
design agencies to handle their web site design and development needs. This article
describes ways to aid in clearing up confusion that may occur during a site's
development. In marketing your business you have to communicate with your
clients, and communication is as important in your web development relationship
with your designer. On the marketing angle: if you don't communicate your site well
to customers, you won't make the sales you need to justify spending a dime on your
website development. This is where these tips and ideas might help give business
owners a feel for what to expect . . . of course sometimes with the nature of the
Internet *anything* can happen.
Not another question!
Be prepared for designers to ask what may seem like a million questions. They
aren't trying to take up all of your important time or to annoy you. They need you to
explain in detail every aspect of what you want your site to do, particularly if it is to
be interactive and/or e-commerce enabled. As a business owner you have to
understand that the developer probably knows nothing about your business or
products. Be direct and concise when speaking about your products. Pretend you
are talking to a potential customer who has never even heard of your product before.
Designers need to understand what they are working on and what goals to achieve.
They might even have ideas that might be exactly what you want. Also, if the agency
does promotion, they will have more information so they can better market your site
to search engines. They can create the right meta tags etc.
Clairvoyant designers
As a designer sometimes it's very hard to guess what the client wants or to develop
a site based on vague information. We have experienced this in our agency and it's
very frustrating to our designers. Designers and application developers are not mind
readers, but some business owners expect us to be. This makes our job very
difficult and can end up costing the business owner more money. So before you hire
a design agency, sit down with your staff, or wife, or whomever you share your
business duties with and discuss exactly what you want and look at other websites
similar to what you want. Write down the url's of the sites you found you wanted to
emulate, and give this information to the designer. Write your ideas down, make
mock layouts of how you might want the navigation of the site to look. Write or print
up the text you want to appear throughout the site, even if it is not polished copy.
Design agency copywriters can polish it for you later. Because no one knows your
product or business better than you do, having that text come from you or your
advertising materials makes the designer's job easier and will cost you less money
for the site design.
Remember, you have to market your service in a way that will get customers to
make that purchase. Having a set plan and course of action makes everything run
more smoothly and ensures that you don't have a shoddy website. You want it to get
the right kind of attention. Just having pretty graphics does you absolutely no good
without a good marketing hook written into the site. Your design agency can't
always do this for you. They may have advertising experts but most do not most
have copywriters who will edit and condense materials. The experts aren't really
advertisers and just don't know your business well enough to write it effectively. You
must "hand hold" a little in this area.
You want how much?
More than likely if you sell a product in a retail shop, by mail order or on the internet,
you tell the customer what the price is--it's all part of your marketing scheme. You
might have a retail price of $25.95 and an "our price" of $20.00. Design agencies
should be up front with their pricing, whether an hourly rate, a full site quote or
whatever. You must know what you are expected to pay so that you don't go
over-budget. Web design is not cheap in most cases. Some services will be billed
up front, and some will not be included in your design quote. Hosting and secure
servers, merchant accounts, software, and promotion services, are services usually
not included in the upfront charge. Be sure and ask about these items because they
can drive up the original cost of the site.
Even though our agency boasts low prices, we may not be cheaper than another
agency just starting out. If you choose a cheap design firm is, ask: does the agency
or person you are contacting have professional looking websites they have
developed? Can their sites stand up against big corporate sites? Do they have
e-commerce capabilities, can they host your site, provide database driven sites, and
can they provide search engine registrations for you, etc.? If not, and you need those
types of services and applications, you need to hire a professional design and
development agency with some experience
Get some background
On your website you will provide background on your company. You want people to
feel confident they can shop and know you have been around a while. You are
marketing your good track record to your customers. The same is true for design
agencies. Don't be afraid to ask to view portfolios of other sites they have developed.
Get some price quotes; try to fit them to your budget. Bear in mind some quotes
could be totally outrageous, others may be in the mid range and some may be on
the very low end. Make sure if you get a very low quote that the agency understands
exactly the type of site that you want. They could have misunderstood and
underquoted. Then you get some huge bill at the end of the development and feel
like you were taken advantage of.
In closing
Marketing your website from the ground up is really what we are discussing here.
When you have a design agency start building your site it will be a marketing gold
mine if you can utilize it correctly and promote it well. If you communicate well with
your design agency they can help you and sometimes suggest advertising agencies
and other ways to help drive more traffic to your site. Remember, your web designer
wants your website to do well so he can boast that he built it. So you both have the
same goal in mind: to make your website the top in its market. The doors to
communication must be open so that ideas can move freely between you and your
designer, so your website may flourish. Kinda like a child huh? So talk to them and
make them understand your business and products or services. That way they can
develop an amazing website for you.
Article by Tam McClure, of NexusWeb.net. Tam has been a web designer for five
years with companies like CompuServe Online Service. She started her own hosting
company (www.nexusweb.net) and design agency (www.nexuswebdesign.com) in
1998 with a staff of five designers/programmers. The focus of the agency is low cost
web design for small and large businesses, mostly e-commerce based sites
uniquely designed for each business. Database and application development is a
new addition to the agency within the last 6 months. You can call Tam toll free:
1-877-999-1658