The Handy guide to choosing your web design agency

Let's say you are on a mission to start a new website for your business, you set the objectives and analysed your audience, but how do you select the right agency to design it? Here are some ideas to consider:

Local Vs Remote agency

The first question you want to ask yourself is: where do you want your agency to be? In most cases it will be close to your office so that you can have face to face meetings reasonably often, save on travel costs and have some kind of flexibility. I used to work with an agency just one block away and it was really handy when we needed to drop some products for a photo shoot or go there to clarify some points on ongoing projects.

A completely different option might be to choose an agency anywhere in the world and work with them virtually on the phone, skype, email, etc.. This is a very realistic approach and is made very easy with today's technologies. You might want to choose this option if you live in a very small town with little resources around, if you're very picky and want to choose the best designers on the planet, or if you want to work on a very low cost budget from an Asian agency. I worked with an agency in China on the development of a new website and we were so happy with the result that we asked them to design our product catalogue. We communicated mainly by email and skype chat with the odd phone call, and with a little bit of organisation it ended up working quite well.

Web design agency Vs Marcomms agency

There are plenty of agencies out there and it might be quite confusing at times to know which do what exactly. Some agencies focus only on website design while others offer a broad range of services by leveraging partners' expertise. Depending on your experience with agencies and the level of existing material you already have for your business, you might have different needs.

For example, if you are starting a new business, it might pay to go to a more general agency that will be able to offer advice on branding, messages and other communications activities to tie with your website. If on the contrary you already have a corporate identity well defined, have a set of brochures, and just need a website with reasonably complex functions, you might prefer working with a specialised web agency. They will have more coders and designers in-house and more relevant experience.

How a good audience analysis will improve your website

During the planning phase of your new website, after you've done some ground work on setting clear objectives and defining the mission of your site, it is equally important that you spend some time looking at your audience and study how it will impact your site.

In the last few months, I have been involved in a few projects related to new websites or website redesigns, and I found that working with my colleagues on this particular exercise was very helpful to understand what the website was supposed to achieve and to ensure we didn't forget anyone in the equation.



Here is a table that I have been using explaining what I mean. The idea is to segment the target audience and analyze each segment separately by asking a few questions. Of course there might be some common answers across the various segments, which is fine.

• Audience segment:
  It might be that you are only addressing one audience, but in most cases, you will have two or three, or maybe more.


• Description:
  Here you should try to describe each segment as much as you can, using a full sentence, but also using characteristics like gender, age group, nationality, etc..


• Current Situation:
  This will help determine the current relationship you have with each segment and see where there is room for improvement.


• Communications objectives:
  What are you trying to do with your website? Educate people, convince them to buy a product, make connections? Try and use active verbs (educate, inform, convince, etc..)


• What they want to learn on your website:
  This will help you define the content of your site.


• What they want to do on your website:
  This will help you define the functions of your site.


• Key messages:
  What is your positioning and unique selling proposition for each segment? Write some simple messages, you can always refine them later.

7 reasons to start a blog to promote your business

In today's world, most businesses have a website promoting their products and services. They'll have a page presenting their business and then go into the details of what products they sell, or what services they offer. However, there is often a limit to how much information they can publish on the website, simply because of the structure of the site.

Here come blogs!



Photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Business blogs bring numerous advantages, and help you on your journey to promote your business better and get more customers. Plus, with all the blogging platforms available today, it couldn't be easier to start a blog. So let's get right into it, and see what a blog can do for you:

1. A blog helps establishing your brand and show that you are an expert in your field.

Publishing regular content about your industry, offering advice, tips or product reviews will convince people that you have expertise in your field.

2. A blog drives more traffic to your website.

Every blog post is a new opportunity to link to your website. Blogging regularly and creating relevant content will also help with your google search ranking and bring you more visitors.

3. A blog helps you improve your relationship with your customers.

Where else can you talk to your customers, show them your view on your industry, give them advice or even ask them questions? Embracing comments is a wonderful way to get feedback from your customers and know what they actually want or need from you.

4. A blog helps you promote your services.

If you are in the service industry, you can easily use your blog to showcase the latest work you've done for a client. A landscape designer could for example write a "before/after" post and impress their readers with the end result. Showcases or case studies are some of the best ways to convince your clients that they need your services, by simply showing them how they could benefit from working with you.

5. A blog helps you sell your products.

Why not write your own product review? Explain what makes your product better than the competition's, list all its benefits, tell people how to use it, show tips and tricks, or unusual ways people have used this product for. As an example, have a look at the Evernote Blog. Evernote is an online note taking application, and they make a brilliant use of their blog, showing amongst other things how some people use Evernote in a creative way to simplify their life.

6. A blog keeps people coming back to your site.

As long as you publish content that is relevant to your business, offer value to your readers, people will come back to your blog! If you publish regularly, your readers will know they can expect some new information on your site and will come back for it.

7. It's free!

Do you know the advertising rate in your local newspaper, or how much a radio advert would cost you? Well let me tell you we're talking big numbers. Blogging, on the other end, can be done at no cost if you choose so! Plus your content will stay on the web for as long as you want it to. It's not a single publication, or a week-long campaign, you can in fact benefit from it day after day, after day.

By now you should get a better understanding of how a blog can help you promote your business, in a cost effective way. And that's what it's all about, here at the Handy Marketer. I help you promote your business with better design and clever marketing.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about blogging for business, what worked for you or what other benefits you noticed, so feel free to comment.

Website planning: setting clear objectives

So you have a small business and you're looking at creating a new website, or redesigning your existing site. But where do you start?

10 years ago this question would have been simple to answer. Creating a website was very difficult if you weren't a designer with extensive knowledge in programming and coding, so you would simply have gone to a local web design agency, and get a quote. Today, technology has advanced tremendously and there are many platforms available for creating websites without knowing anything about coding, which opens new opportunities for small businesses to design their own websites.

Whether you choose to work with an agency or build your own website, I think the most important step towards creating your website is to plan it carefully. You need to think long and hard about this website, why you need it, how much time and money you are going to invest in it, what it is going to achieve for you, who it is going to be addressed to, etc.. All these questions should be properly answered before you even start wondering what the site will look like or who will design it.
Website Objectives.



Photo credit: PhillipC

This is the first post of a series that will teach you how to start a new website. In this series, I will give you tools and recommendations for each step of the project, from the initial planning to the design part if you wish to go down this route. I will also talk about working with agencies, outsourcing work, managing the content and the maintenance of the website. In the last 8 years I have worked on many websites, small and large, managed either by agencies or in-house, B2C or B2B, so I have been exposed to all the stages of a website life cycle and can draw from my experience to share what I've learned.

So let's go back to planning, and first things first: create a business case for your website.