Planning is a crucial step in selecting the right agency for you. Agencies will also love you for being well prepared and as a result be better prepared to help you reach your goals.
Goals help solidify a direction for you and your team. This direction is a high level view of features, services, products, and objectives that you wish to reach with the website. The agency you ultimately choose will assist you in fleshing out your goals in more detail. As well, they will bring about creative ways to accomplish your goals and finely tune them. Having a good sense of direction helps you in choosing the best agency for the job.
Document the goals you and your team have for your new website. We encourage you to not only think through how you wish to better serve your users but also how you can better serve your company. What features are you looking for within the new website? What features do you currently have that can be improved upon? Is there a service you wish to provide that you were not before? Are there new products that need to go into the eCommerce storefront?
Once you have your goals in list form, prioritize them. In the same way, just as you would a sales presentation, create a brief mission statement for your new website. Prioritizing your goals for the new website or website redesign will help in future planning. Remember that an agency responding to an RFP or consulting with you, will be able to identify more quickly your objectives if you are able to articulate them clearly.
Searching for an agency is the easy part. Simply type into your preferred search engine: "web design Columbus, Ohio" or "digital marketing agency Columbus, Ohio". Obviously, insert your city and state of choice and or search phrases. If you want WordPress, search that too. If you want unique services such as SEO search that as well. Needless to say, you will get thousands of results within your city.
After searching a phrase, start visiting sites that are listed within the first 1 - 5 pages. Depending on the city you are searching within, you will likely see a few ads, some local listings, and some compiled list of "the top web designers" in your city.
Now it's time to start noting companies that you think would be a good fit. This is all at first glance but it's time to start digging into the company's website and really understanding what they can provide to you.
Here is some criteria you can follow when researching agencies:
Now, you should have a handful or maybe even a few pages of agencies who you think will be a good fit. It is a good idea to compare the agencies. Based on your goals, you can start to compare and contrast. If you break it down, you should be able to narrow your list of agencies based on your research.
Depending on the size of your company, there may be teams with separate tasks who may not be aware of the upcoming opportunities. A notification should be sent out about the current agenda to make them aware that submitting feature requests would be beneficial to the project as a whole. It is far better to be made aware of features up front even if they are to be developed down the road and not within the current sprint's backlog or phase.
An internal review of your current goals, research, agencies, and overall plan as it stands currently is something that will help both with additional input as well as team organization. Moving forward, your company and team members will appreciate being kept in the loop and made aware of progress of the plan for the new website in general.
Now that all internal preparation and review is complete. It is time to request information or to submit your request for proposal to the marketing agencies you have gathered in your research.
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ViaForge provides full service, creative, digital marketing services to help produce quality one of a kind digital experiences for brands (businesses) in Columbus Ohio and around the world. We look forward to creating interactive and informative experiences surrounding your unique product.
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