We’ve all been there...

“I’m going to hire a web agency as they’re the experts in this complicated industry”  
RIGHT DECISION

“...but I’m going to tell you what I like when it comes to design”
  WRONG DECISION

Gone are the days that simply having a web presence is enough to tell your customer that you’re up with the latest technologies and put your brand across as ’down with the kids’ It’s no longer good enough to have a web presence that you think makes you look good as you now have to compete with the 10/20/100 other companies selling the same messaging as you.

Simply creating your site because you like the look of it is sooooooo 1990s and is completely the wrong way to approach a design or a redesign.

You need to design and build your site specifically targeting your audience. As the web has grown up so have the people using it. The way they interact with your site should be an extension of how you interact with them directly. There’s no point having amazing customer service, great products and the best offer on the web if your website can’t be found, looks dated and is hard to use. The site is an extension of your company and quite possible the best investment you can make.

When it comes to the design of the site find an agency with a proven track record of results in your sector, listen to them and learn from their experience. This is what they do. Don’t choose an agency because you like the look of a site they made a couple of years ago and don’t use someone’s sisters, best mates cousin who did a web design course at uni. Choosing an agency is difficult but that’s a topic for another day.

Design is no longer just about making something look nice online, it’s about understanding what’s going wrong with the current site, who the target audience is and what they need, it’s about understanding analytics data and behaviour patterns along with search engines how they work and how to pull all of this together into a site they works... it’s what we do.

Understand that a good agency isn’t designing your site based on things you like, they’re designing it based on what your users want... ultimately it’s all about results, if it’s getting these who cares if you don’t like it ;)

p.s. sometimes it goes a bit like this clip