It's time for a website redesign for your business. Perhaps the design is getting a little long in the tooth (home page sliders, anyone?), perhaps your mission/products/services have evolved, or maybe you want some new functionality that makes this an opportune time to also look at the rest of the site (like repainting a room when you replace the windows). Whatever your reason, turn to a web development agency. You might be able to do it in-house, but we'll give you better results. Here's why:
Experience and Economies of Scale
You aren't a website designer – probably wouldn't be reading this if you were. But maybe you have someone in-house that updates your existing site. Or you've worked with an individual who kind of knows how to make changes to your website. Why hire an agency instead?
We design and build websites all day long. For over 15 years now. We have the experience with the tools and techniques to work expediently and effectively. We generally don't need to "figure out" how to do anything, because we've done it before. Our experience makes us far more efficient than the alternatives, saving you time and ultimately money - your investment in your marketing goes further with a dedicated team, than assigning the project to someone who isn't quite set up for the task.
Because we design and build websites all day long, a lot of your site is already built. That's not to say that every website isn't treated with individual attention to detail and execution. But there is overlap between what you need accomplished, and what we have built in the past – and that overlap again saves you time and development costs.
Tools for the Job
There are a lot of companies that provide "free" website builders you can use when you sign up for web hosting, and sites where you can build a simple website for your business for no charge. But a professionally designed and executed website comes with inherent costs, including
- Software
- Plugins or Extensions
- Marketing Tools
- External Services like local search listings or social media integration
Because we use these tools across many websites, we have bulk licenses, lifetime subscriptions, and unlimited access to many of them - saving you $1000's on setup and functionality costs.
Everything else that goes into building a successful website, BEYOND the website
Once a new or redesigned website is launched, there are several steps that should be taken to ensure the site performs well with search engines, reaches your clients or customers, and is listed locally if you have a service area or brick-and-mortar location. Indexing a website with Google and Bing is the number one thing that should be done after launching, and most sites we consult on have not been. If your website and business isn't showing up on search maps maybe you don't have a Google MyBusiness or Bing Place set up - we do that as part and parcel of our services. We're not going to give away all our secrets here, but suffice to say we have a long list of to-do's beyond designing and building your website to make it successful.
This isn't as easy as we make it look
When you work with pondSoup on your new or redesigned website, it might seem like a simple process - you're getting updates almost daily, our milestones are tight together, and depending on your scope we might have a prototype in a week - but that's just because we're good.
We've had the "this only took you two hours we can do it ourselves next time" conversation. With the inevitable subsequent "that took us 4 days and isn't done please help." But the math is flawed. It took 3 operators 2 hours, and they have 30 years' experience between them. The client has one person, and this isn't their job. Different calculation.
Compare and contrast building your website in-house, or with a web development agency
The simplest way to compare the costs are to consider these factors:
Do you have someone in-house you are confident can create a responsive, search-engine friendly, accessible website?
If so, is the value of your time (and that in-house person's time), greater or less than the price of hiring an agency?
Pretty simple. Want to find out the price of hiring an agency? Give us a call or email below and after a free consultation, and some consideration of the absolute best way we can help your business grow, we can tell you.