Hiring a Web Designer Agency: Weeding Out a Bad One [Part 1]
Perception is everything and this is especially true for businesses. The way that potential customers perceive your business can determine whether you will hit those crucial sales targets.
Your company’s website is one of the avenues potential customers use to gauge your business. Have a sloppy website and you risk your products or services being branded as careless. Before you win the revenue game, you need a website that will improve the perception of your business among clients. Thus, hiring a web designer company with a proven track record is critical to the success of your business.
In this post, we’ll look at some tell-tale signs that highlight web designers to avoid. Let’s get started.
6 Signs of a Bad Web Designer or Web Design Agency
1. They Make Huge Promises
Beware of big-talkers. These are the designers that promise you heaven with your website. Web design technologies, just like other technologies, have their limitations. There are things that can be accomplished in a particular fashion and others that cannot.
If you have specific requirements for your website, the design agency should be honest with what can be accomplished. One easy way of knowing whether a requirement can be accomplished is to check whether other websites have the same feature.
2. They Use Pre-Made Templates
Using templates for your business website is way 1997. Today, every business is online and customers have been exposed hundreds of designs. The last thing you want is prospective customers stopping by your website only to see the same template spotted by a personal blogger.
True, templates can make production faster and act as a framework on which the agency can curve out the design for your business website. However, using templates will restrict the designers' capability since they will be working according to the basic design blocks already in place. Stay away from website designers who use knock-off $60 website themes.
3. They Don’t Remain Connected
The true test of whether a web design company is good for you will come a few days after you have signed the project contract. Bad design agencies will fail to give you updates on your project and some may even ignore your emails.
It’s understandable if a designer cannot get back to you immediately over email. But if you have to wait several days to get a simple yes or no answer to a query, something is definitely wrong.
Before hiring web design agency or designer, watch out for small signs that can indicate how they work. For instance, did you ask the designers a question and they disappeared for a week, and on appearing went on courting you without explaining what happened? Stay away from such designers.
4. They Have No Portfolio
Show me your work and I’ll know your skills. That’s a paraphrased adage that shows the need for evaluating past performance to determine future expectation. Any professional designer must have a portfolio of works done in the past. Otherwise, why are they a designer? Even burger joints hold tasting sessions!
Go through the designer’s or agency's portfolio to gauge their skills. Do the designs appeal to you? Don’t fall for the “I keep my clients confidential” line that incompetent designers tend to give. Any website designer proud of their work will be happy to share them, even if they are not in the public domain.
5. They Don’t Know SEO
A beautiful website that does not convert prospects to customers is (literally of no use.) like a billboard being shown to a blind man . What results would that bring? SEO is the name of the game for businesses that want to reach their sales targets.
Search engine spiders cannot determine the aesthetic nature of a website. What matters to them is that the content is properly structured for the website to be categorized correctly. Be cautious of a design agency that is solely interested in pushing “creativity to the limits” while ignoring conversions and SEO.
6. They Don’t Value Their Clients
Another thing you should check is whether the design agency values you. As a client, you want to have synergy with the designers, in as much as you may not meet them physically. The designers should be excited to work on your project and confident of executing a winning design.
You can know whether a designer values you from the communication you have. If a designer is rude or tries to impose his ideas in your project, you are better off finding someone else to help you.
Related: Steps to Follow for Hiring a Good Web Designer or Design Firm
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