Web designers Banbury.
Clearly one of the more highly contested terms for search engine optimisation in the Banbury area – there are over 100 monthly searches for the term web designers Banbury according to the range of tools I use to analyse this sort of stuff.
Banbury is a small town in North Oxfordshire and has its fair share of web design agencies and freelancers.
Toast, where I work is by far the most established of all the agencies, but does that make us the best?
If you need a web designer in Banbury, what should you look for?
It can sometimes be quite difficult to differential web design agencies in your local area.
More often than not, their websites are interchangeable – by this, I mean that there’s little to judge based on the work on their sites.
You could swap out the logos and colour schemes and they’ basically be the same.
Don’t choose a web design agency based on if you like their website or not.
Sounds odd as you are searching for a local Banbury-based web company, but first impressions can be deceiving.
1. Are all Banbury-based web designers qualified designers?
I see a lot of freelancer and agency WordPress sites built on premium themes – so the web designers haven’t actually designed these sites themselves, they’ve simply coloured-in someone else’s design.
There’s nothing essentially wrong with this if you have a tight budget and are happy with a ‘me too’ website.
The problem comes where the local design agency is selling this into your company as a bespoke design.
Always check – my design team are qualified to BA and MA standards.
2. Are they interested in growing your business rather than just building your website?
Your website should get more sales (or whatever means success) for your business. Whilst it can be tempting to go with a fresh-faced Banbury WordPress freelancer, are they going to bring anything more to the project than making something look nice?
Planning and developing a WordPress site goes far beyond the look and feel.
An experienced agency will bring some business acumen to the table. Having run a design agency for over twenty years, I have a fair bit of this, so I am just as interested in how your site will improve your bottom-line as how ‘nice’ it will look.
3. Does your local web design agency know what it’s doing?
One thing is true of WordPress – it makes it very easy to build a bad website.
As the most popular content management system on the planet, WordPress has made it easy to throw a site together quickly.
This can tempt some Banbury-based agencies to maximise their profits whilst delivering a sub-standard job.
Always ask for a demo of how they use and build WordPress sites before you choose a local web design company – get them to show, and explain to you, how everything works.
If they know what they are doing, they’ll be more than happy to show you the lot (you may have to tell them that you’ve seen enough).
4. Can they demonstrate their experience?
Talking is one thing, doing is something completely different.
All the sites I build are tracked to demonstrate how successful they have actually been.
Without this data, you simply don’t know how good a site is, so look for a track record of how the agency (or freelancer) has benefitted other businesses and ask to see data, don’t just take their word for it.
5. Check our their premises.
I always like to visit my clients’ businesses, but I also like them to come and see our studio.
You can judge a lot about an agency in Banbury by their premises. Do they work in some pokey shack on an industrial estate or do they have a nice office in the centre of Banbury?
As your web site design team, it’s crucial your agency understands the importance of branding, and your web design agencies premises, it’s interior and staff are all an extension of this.
Successful agencies invest in their premises, decor and staff, so you’ll get a good idea about what to expect if your web designer works out of their garage.
Making your final decision on a Banbury-based web design team.
There are some really talented web design companies in Banbury, so if you’re a local business, I’d urge you to look locally for a WordPress developer before venturing further afield.
Most agencies, like mine, will be very keen to work with fellow local businesses and may even sharpen their pencils a little more on the quote.
At Toast, I often hear people saying that they ‘thought we would be too expensive’ to work on their project or that we only work on large website projects.
The opposite is true in our case – we work with a lot of small businesses and have a different approach to pricing projects.
When talking to a web design agency about fees, it shouldn’t be about what they are going to charge you, it should be about what they can do within your budget.
If you are looking for a Banbury-based WordPress freelancer, get in touch – I’d love to speak to you about our project.
If you need a WordPress agency based in Banbury, call me at work on 01295 266644.
Credit – Hook Norton Photo by Colin Watts on Unsplash