There is one situation that all business owners know well — the website is way past its deadline, there are three different web development firms that have put forward their offers, but nothing seems to be correct about each of them without an evaluation criteria.
Choosing the right web development agency is certainly one of the most crucial steps for any business. Afterall, the website is the first place where the client gets an impression of the company and the last place before making any purchase decision. This is the center of all marketing efforts.
This is how you need to approach the problem:
Note Down Your Needs Elaboratively
Before evaluating any specific agency, you should make sure that you know what your needs are. The brochure for the professional services agency will require quite a different set of technical requirements from an e-commerce website or SaaS application user interface. If the agency specializes in creating MVPs for startups, then it is unlikely that they will have enough means for your integration project.
To write down your needs will take you much less time at the very beginning and help you avoid making the most common mistake in choosing an agency.
Truthfully tell how big your project is, what functionality it requires, what integrations and other technical aspects you have in mind, as well as what expectations will you have from your project one year after its release. Such agencies that start asking about all these aspects during the first consultation deserve your attention.
Evaluate Portfolio with Intention, Not Just Aesthetics
The portfolio is where an agency presents its best works. Yet, the issue is not whether the designs are pretty, but whether the work of the agency meets your needs.
Choose the portfolio samples that match your business or have the same functional needs; choose relevancy, not just aesthetics. A nice portfolio of websites made for creative agencies does not mean much when it comes to developing projects with complex user experience, integration of third-party APIs, and high-performance optimization of an e-commerce platform.
Pro tip: ask about failures. How the agency dealt with a bad client relationship? How a changed scope of work during the development process was handled? How the issue with the launch was fixed. Agencies that do not hesitate to tell you their failures are more trustworthy than those who share only successes.
Understand Who Actually Does the Work
This is the point most people either don’t know or don’t care about: Who will actually build the website?
It is possible that UK web development agencies will operate according to a concept where their senior staff members will focus on developing the business while actual work will be done by juniors or even offshore developers. Some companies might employ freelancers or white label web development agencies like Unify Wizards in case they have additional development tasks without openly admitting that.
There is nothing wrong about that initially, but this situation will affect quality control, communication, and responsiveness of the company when some changes should be made either during or after development.
Discuss their responsibilities concerning your project. Understand if you will be having someone managing your project account and how they are going to organize the transfer of information from designers to developers and quality assurance specialists. How many people will be working on your project and will they be their employees or contractors?
Pay Attention on the Agency’s Communication Style
Effective communication can make or break your project despite having excellent agencies with technical skills. The agencies that delay their reply to your initial query, do not provide clear answers on your questions, and do not explain the way they operate at all during their presentation phase are an indicator of the way they will be communicating to you once the project starts.
You need to pay attention to how quickly and effectively they communicate with you even before signing any contract. It will be wise to ask whether their proposals are customized to suit you or just generic. It will also be wise to know their approach regarding project management; how do they communicate and manage escalations?
Think Beyond Launch!
When it comes to website development, the conversation always tends to focus more on the construction itself and lacks consideration of website maintenance post-launch.
Website maintenance can involve various aspects such as fixing potential security issues, managing plug-ins, improving performance, updating content, and optimizing user behavior studies. Maintenance offered by the agency, costs involved, and possible switching providers later down the road are certainly issues worth discussing before you sign the agreement.
Don’t forget to ask who will retain the right to your code, design templates, and hosting once the job is completed. Don’t forget to inquire how the documentation process works if you decide to take website development in-house or switch to another web development agency in the future.
What is White Label Web Development? How Can I use It?
White label web development means the creation of a website by a dedicated development team branded by your company to deliver a completed project without showing your client that there was a third party working on it.
Although it may seem complex, actually it is rather easy. You deal with all the tasks, including the briefing, the strategy, the client communication, and at last you present the client with a finished product, branded by you. And the development partner creates the real product itself: the coding, the CMS configuration, the integration of the required plugins.
The Unify Wizards Approach to Web Development in the UK
Unify Wizards work with companies in the UK to develop web projects that aim at delivering the commercial benefits rather than fulfilling all the requirements in the project checklist. They make sure that the brief and the code are both of excellent quality.
They provide a full-service web development as well as white label web development services for agencies requiring development but lacking the skills to deliver them. Transparency in communications, realistic time frames, and post-launch support is never a separate element from the rest of the process.
