It’s every marketing coordinator’s worst nightmare.

You know your website sucks. Compared to the websites of your biggest competitors, with its flamboyant animations and bright buttons, yours looks like it was made by a teenager in the 90s.

So what do you do? You go to your boss and pitch a redesign.

A few days later, you’re sifting through prospective web agencies, emailing dozens and calling a few. You finally settle on one agency that specializes in design. They get your vision — a radically different beast that’s as beautiful as its competitors — and you’re confident they’ll execute the job perfectly.

But when the new website goes live, you’re shocked to find out that nothing has changed. It’s not driving growth, the conversion rate is the same, and it sure isn’t bringing in more sales.

So what went wrong?

Here’s why many businesses hire the wrong web agency: you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Having a pretty design is great and all, but it shouldn’t be the end goal. After all, what’s the relationship between beauty and ROI?

Now that might not be you, but the point is if you want your website redesign to have an impact, you need to put your personal biases aside and focus on what really matters. To do this, let’s begin with your key performance indicators.

Begin With Your KPIs

Before you start your search, it’s important to establish what actually impacts your business’s growth.

The key here is not to focus on the website itself, but the bigger purpose it serves. By identifying which key performance indicators (KPIs) need to be prioritized, you have a clear target to work towards. That way, you’re not just jumping into the process, hoping that the improved website will somehow translate into growth.

In case you’re not aware, a key performance indicator is something measurable that gives an idea of how well a business is performing. For websites, these include:

• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Unique visitors
• Average time spent on your website

Shifting your focus away from superficial elements like design and towards KPIs also allows room for flexibility.

Let’s go back to the marketing coordinator from earlier. What if the biggest problem wasn’t the aesthetics, but the navigation, or the mobile-friendliness? In that case, the goal of the redesign was completely off!

What if instead, the marketing coordinator determined that the website had poor audience retention, and made it a goal to increase it by 10%? Now, the design isn’t the final objective, but a component into the larger picture.

What kind of web agency do you need?

Now let’s look into the different types of web agencies and which one is best suited to your goals.

Web agencies are diverse, specializing in everything from a particular skillset like development to a particular industry like healthcare.

The price ranges widely as well. Individual freelancers charge much less than large web development agencies, and even in freelancing different people charge vastly different prices depending on skill and expertise.

Here is a list of some of the different types of agencies:

• Freelancers are by far the cheapest category here, costing about half as much as agencies. However, they generally have specific and limited skillsets, and it’s harder to gauge a freelancer’s ability to execute your project just using their profile alone.
• Web design agencies specialize in the aesthetics of your website, using graphics, white space and colour to effectively communicate your message and capture your target audience.
• Web development agencies are experts in the technicalities behind a website. They’re the ones that actually put the website together using the latest technologies and code.
• Web strategy agencies, in contrast, focus more on how your website fits into your branding and marketing strategy. These agencies are best if your website isn’t generating the traffic or sales you’re expecting.

Choosing the right agency

At this point, finding your ideal agency is a breeze. But there are still some things to keep in mind. How agencies portray themselves online doesn’t always reflect who they really are, or how compatible they are to you.

An agency that markets themselves as industry experts, for example, may not have the interpersonal skills to integrate your suggestions into their vision of your website.

The best way to weed out any agencies you don’t want is to look for red flags, either on their website or through talking with them, such as:

• Outsourcing their labour to other countries
• Using confusing jargon on their website
• Not having a lot of experience or a portfolio
• Not being transparent
• Saying yes to everything you want without giving suggestions
• Talking too generally and not going into detail about the process
• Having a low client retention rate

In addition, reviews on platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer are also great indicators of how satisfied clients generally are with a particular agency.

Finding your ideal agency doesn’t have to be difficult

In the end, there’s no perfect way to finding the ideal candidate, but by following these steps and knowing what you need, you reduce the risk of wasting money on the wrong agency.

If you want a web agency that’s dedicated to bringing results to the table, hit us up at create@thousand.plus! Also, click here to grab your free website pre-checklist guide our team put together.