Starting a business can be stressful and many business owners first attempt to build a website themselves. After they realize that there are benefits from having a professional perform the work, the question comes to mind, who do I hire? There are many people who develop website and is it better to go with a freelancer or a web agency? In several years we have found that many business owners who start with a freelance designer, eventually switch to an agency.

Project Management in Development

This goes back to our introduction, but focus on your business and leave your website to the professionals. Hiring a freelancer means the accountability and managing of the web development project will primarily rely on you to perform follow ups. This can be frustrating especially if you don’t know the first thing about developing websites or what the steps in the process are. Web agencies have specific members of their team that specialize in making your website a reality, such as project managers, creative designers, and engineers. They can be the bridge between your ideas and the final product.

Web Agencies Have Extensive Range of Skills and Talent

When you hire a web agency you are hiring a whole team of people to work on your website instead of just one person with a freelancer. We mentioned this in our last point, but that was more specifically to project management. There are many different ways to approach website development and different functions you want the site to perform. Having an agency comes with many benefits including many experienced resources, diverse skill sets, and unique talent that fit each challenge. More than one person is going to be visiting your website (if it’s done properly). Wouldn’t it be smart to have more than one person build it so it can incorporate different points of view. Each team member has skills that each contribute additional aspects into the foundation of your website.

Agencies Do Not Disappear

Since freelancers work remotely they can sometimes (and often) disappear. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they have gotten too busy and cannot support all their customers. It’s also possible they have hit a roadblock they don’t know how to resolve. They may have a medical emergency or any number of things occur that could make them unreachable. Your website has a risk of being incomplete and inaccessible since your single point of contact is gone. It goes without saying that you are highly unlikely to recoup any money you have invested and you will likely have to start from the beginning. Save your website, brand, sanity and valuable funds from such potential issues. Web agencies have routine meetings with their team members to make sure everyone is completing their work up to standard and on time. Account managers are assigned to make sure there is consistent client communication. This better structure within the company and team members ensures the success of your project from start to finish.

Communication is Key in Web Design

There are so many ways to create a website and different businesses want to express certain aspects about them they want to express to their future customers. This is your customer’s window into your business’s soul. Having regular, continuous communication is critical to make your website successful. Freelancers can be limited in communication because of their one person status. Having a team of people makes it easier to get and touch and trade ideas. As mentioned before, account managers and project managers are frequently in touch with the client to make sure that their project is matching their vision. Additionally these resources are available after the project is over. As an example a simple change on your site like the business hours or a picture could prove problematic if you are unable to reach the freelancer, who built the site. With an agency there are many resources available that can help quickly make updates or even provide training to you or your staff.

LaunchUX is a full service website development agency that specializes in mobile optimized websites and search engine optimization. If you are interested in starting a project, ask us for a free consultation so that we can provide you with some pointers, whether you use us or not