Your web presence is crucial to your business. In this digital age, most people check a product or service first online before purchasing it. Whether you’re a small business owner, engaged in a medium-sized e-commerce business, or a business seller of a major online marketplace. Check the top signs of a bad web design agency to avoid hiring & how to identify the wrong companies to work with.
It’s necessary to have a dedicated website to showcase your brand and serve as a point of reference to your potential customers. In this post, you’ll learn how to determine the signs of a bad web design agency. Let’s get started!
A successful website starts with your quest to hire a good web design agency – a trusted, reliable, and dependable web designer who will help you create a responsive, functional, and attractive website. How do you know if you’re working with a good or bad web designer?
Bad Web Design Agency Signs
1 No Portfolio to Present: Avoid Hiring a Bad Web Design Agency
Web design is considered an art and a science at the same time, so you want your website professionally made to ensure a high rate of success. A good company has a good eye for attractive web design and is technologically savvy to avoid bad design agency.
Like a trusted and reputable web design agency Melbourne, who would be happy to show you their portfolio. If an agency cannot present their portfolio, then there are possible reasons why is this so, including the following signs of a bad web design agency:
- A bad design agency cannot present a portfolio most especially if it’s their first project. It is so risky to entrust your website to someone new and completely inexperienced and untested.
- Another reason why a design agency cannot present a portfolio is that they have built terrible websites in the past.
2 Overcharging or Too Cheap: Bad Web Design
Web design services are not highly regulated, so web designers can charge whatever they like. A bad web design agency may charge too high or too low, but a good web designer checks the prevailing rates and level with the average rates as much as possible. Here are some points to remember:
- Web designers have different tiers (e.g., catering to nonprofits or small businesses).
- Web designers also charge based on their experience, portfolio, and presence or absence of a physical office. Online agencies tend to rate low because they don’t pay for office rentals and other expensive aspects (e.g., cleaning services) of having a physical office.
- The cost of the web design services depends on the level of security, attractiveness, and functionality of your desired website.
3 Offers to Do the Job Without a Contract
While no contract means no red tape, room to haggle for the best price, and avoiding overcharging, it also means no guaranteed protection.
A contract protects you and the designer to prevent disputes and major problems in the future. A bad design agency offers no contract, and it means you’re not even sure if the job will be finished on your agreed date.
What makes a good contract?
- Stipulates the hourly rate or pay rate of the designer
- Shows the website’s final price and breakdown of the services
- Includes any revisions as part of your verbal agreement and initial contract
- Sets clear expectations (e.g., WordPress theme, layout, speed, font size, etc.)
4 Cannot Show Mockups and Prototypes: Bad Web Design
A bad design agency prevents clients from demanding. Or asking a lot of revisions, so they cannot present mockups and prototypes.
You should be able to check your website in various stages. Before launching in order to check it and address any concerns. Before launching your website, a good web designer should be able to present the following:
- Static mockup of your website
- Site’s working prototype
- A ready prototype (looking exactly like the final website to be running)
5 Poor Communication Skills
A bad designer cannot explain tech terms in layman’s language well. A good web designer is knowledgeable about web design trends and skilled to present his ideas and integrate them with yours. If a web designer speaks jargon, how can you fully understand the process?
You might end up having unclear expectations, doubts, and failed results. Ask relevant questions to attest to a designer’s communication skills before hiring one. Here are some questions you can ask:
- What makes an attractive website?
- How will the website highlight my best products?
- What are the design skills and courses you have taken?
- Can you please explain the design process in detail?
- Why are your services so expensive?
6 Their Own Website is Abominable
Alluding to the agency’s professed knowledge of the subject, this concludes the statement. Take a look at the following aspects when evaluating the agency’s website:
- Is the website visually appealing?
- How quickly can it be loaded?
- Are textual fonts easy to read?
- Is the design responsive, that is, does the website adapt to your device’s screen (desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc.)?
The capacity for responsive design is crucial, as you must take your website to where your customers are. With the proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones, your web design company should anticipate these strategies in its design.
A separate website dedicated to mobile devices is possible, but a responsive design is more common among small and medium-sized businesses because it costs less and performs better.
7 Brief History: Avoid Hiring a Bad Web Design Agency
It’s usually beneficial to partner with companies that have been around for a long time. First, they are current with the changing technology.
Otherwise, they would have abandoned the business sooner. When you entrust a newbie, especially as a cheaper alternative, you lack assurance that they’ll still be available to assist with your website after completing the project.
Conclusion
As a website owner, you must ensure your website will be functional. Appealing, easy to navigate, fast, reliable, and mobile responsive.
It should represent your brand or purpose. A bad web design agency is not fit to do the job, offering deals that are too good to be true, fishy, and don’t a document. Avoid such an agency by keeping these five signs at heart when hiring one.
