How to choose a web agency in 5 steps

Last modification on November 27, 2023 by Loïc Frissard

One of the most difficult aspects of launching a new website is choosing a service provider. With so many web agencies, it can be complicated just to find the one that suits you best.

Your website is the first point of contact for many of your potential customers and potentially represents a significant part of your turnover. Whether you are launching your first website or preparing to redesign your old website, a good web development agency must ensure that you are given an impeccable image on the web.

Here are several elements to take into account when choosing your web agency

Define your needs and your budget.

Before you even start looking at web agencies, you need to understand your needs and establish a budget.

You should know that there are all kinds of prices for creating a website which may vary depending on whether you want to build a simple showcase site or an e-commerce site with several thousand pages.

To do this, you must write specifications to precisely define your project. This will subsequently make it possible to obtain precise quotes and avoid unpleasant surprises.

Also, don’t forget to keep budget for marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO) and advertising in general are areas that are too often neglected.

Once you have defined an envelope for your web project, you can start looking for an agency.

Select multiple web agencies

To find the web agency that suits you, you must first make an initial selection of agencies.

You can first try to find an agency from your own network. However, care must be taken to verify the credibility of the agency by checking the various points discussed below.

Another alternative is to consult directories which classify the different web agencies according to their location and their specialization. These sites are great starting points for finding the web agency that’s right for you.

Sort the agencies according to your needs

You can easily be tempted to call on a general web agency to take care of development, marketing or even visual identity. However, you cannot be excellent in everything. With a specialist agency, there will be less risk that your project fails.

The choice of your agency will therefore depend on the type of project you wish to carry out. This may involve the creation of a website, an application, or an online store. In this case it will be better to favor a web development agency. Some agencies are even specialized depending on the technologies used. Thus, we find Prestashop agencies, WordPress agencies and even Shopify agencies.

On the other hand, other agencies are more specialized in traffic acquisition. This is why you also find SEO agencies to improve your natural referencing, Google Ads agencies for paid referencing or more general inbound marketing agencies.

Once you have a list of agencies, you can start sifting through them to see which ones are best suited to support you.

Examine the seriousness of each web agency

Checking the credibility and professionalism of the agency you are going to choose is one of the most important steps for your future project.

If a development agency’s site looks outdated and doesn’t follow best practices, that agency should probably be banned. You should be able to find all the information you want with just a few clicks from the agency’s home page.

In addition to user experience, you can also check page loading times, visual quality, and even videos. These elements are not necessarily essential for an agency’s website, but it shows that they take best practices into account. As you may have noticed yourself, all of these elements create a more engaging experience for users.

The same goes for an agency that claims to sell SEO services, if it is only present on a few keywords on Google, it is probably because this is not its preferred area.

Finally, each agency should also have customer testimonials, with the name of the site in order to be able to verify the quality of the work carried out.

Contact and compare web agencies

Now that you have a few agencies on your list, you should contact them directly, asking questions about how they work and requesting an accurate quote.

An agency should ask you almost as many questions as you ask them.
These questions should relate to your expectations, desires, goals, etc. A good web agency strives to understand its clients well so that they can achieve the best possible results.

However, the answers must be clear. Although the technical terms may seem unfamiliar to you, these aspects must be explained well enough. If you go to a web agency that goes around in circles with vague and jargon-heavy terms, consider using another agency.

Once you have reviewed your agencies by contacting them directly, you are ready to make a choice.