Most people appreciate a nice looking web design, but very few appreciate the details and hard work that’s put into award-winning web designs. Other web designers do, but there’s a good chance your agency’s clients don’t. So instead of sweating it with lengthy and expensive design processes, there are good reasons to consider asking a WordPress web design company to get the job done for you.
The goal of your WordPress design
As a subcontractor to many digital agencies for outsourced WordPress development services, we can quickly distinguish between agencies that charge top dollar for excellence in every aspect of a website and agencies that offer the best bang-for-the-buck websites that look sleek and get the job done.
There’s no right or wrong, they operate in different price segments and serve companies with different needs.
The struggle of finding the right WordPress web designers
As a WordPress development company, we know how to serve both of these segments. As a WordPress design company, however, we see the greatest potential in helping agencies with the entry-level of WordPress web design services.
Why? We used to focus only on development but kept hearing from agencies that they struggled to find solid WordPress web designers who could keep a budget and timeline, and be available whenever needed.
Freelancers came and went, while internal web designers were often too busy or kept overshooting the goal as they perfected their own work at the expense of budgets and development costs.
If you want your clients to know what they get and when they will get it, a WordPress web design company could be a great alternative.
Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of getting WordPress web design services from an agency vs hiring a WordPress designer or freelance designer. If you’re interested in a comparison between the two for WordPress development services, we have this other article you will enjoy.
Hiring a WordPress designer to work at your agency
The main pros of hiring internal WordPress designers are:
- Low total cost if you have a steady stream of projects and can “control” the efficiency of the design process
- Good awareness of their capabilities
- They can communicate directly with your clients and double as project managers
- Quick problem solving together with web developers if they are also internal
The main cons of hiring internal WordPress designers on the other hand are:
- Keeping designers motivated
- Maintaining efficiency in the process
- Balancing workload when the flow of new projects isn’t stable
- Vulnerability for the business of relying on one or a few talented designers
Let’s look at these considerations in some more detail.
If your agency has a steady pipeline of new WordPress website projects that need to get done, you can anticipate the capacity that you need for web design. If you have 4 new projects per month and web design takes 30-40 hours, you need one full-time WordPress website designer on your team.
Having an internal dedicated WordPress web designer means you learn what they’re capable of, how fast they are and you can put them in direct contact with your clients.
If your development team is also internal, your designers and developers can also communicate quickly and easily to resolve any conflicts or uncertainties that can happen when a design gets coded into a WordPress website.
Those are some real benefits of hiring WordPress designers to join your agency’s team. But there are a good amount of challenges that come with this setup as well.
Many agencies struggle with keeping their designers motivated over time if they should always aim for the same level of quality. As artists, they want to develop their skills and deliver better results for each project. Whether the client has a budget or need for it is a different matter altogether.
Also, building your reputation on the skills of a few internal designers comes with the risk of losing momentum if any of them would leave or get sick. Two weeks out means getting delayed by two full projects, which can be difficult to catch up on.
For many agencies, the flow of website projects isn’t that steady. Some months are slow, and during others, the sales go off the chart. That means you might have idle designers at times, and a long backlog at other times – potentially hurting new sales if the timelines aren’t competitive enough.
Hiring freelancers for WordPress web design
Pros of hiring a WordPress web design freelancer:
- Flexibility in capacity
- More talented designers to choose from
Cons of hiring freelancers for web design:
- Availability is uncertain
- Communication may be slower
- Less interaction between designers and developers
Many talented designers work as freelancers, so there are good reasons to opt for this strategy when sourcing design work as a digital agency.
Without the fixed cost of employees, agencies working with freelancers can enjoy the benefits of scaling their costs with the amount of work that’s coming in and avoid bottlenecks and idle workers.
However, that assumes that the freelancers are available when needed which may require having a pretty long list of freelancers on speed dial. The best freelancers are often keeping their schedules full, and the scramble to find someone available when a new project comes in can be quite frustrating.
Another potential drawback of freelancers is communication since freelancers work on their own schedules and are contracted for specific tasks. It’s more difficult to maintain rich and frequent communication between the freelancers and other stakeholders of web design projects, such as clients and web developers.
7 Reasons to work with a WordPress web design company instead
The choice between internal designers and freelancers depends on the type of quality and process that your digital agency is aiming for. But there’s a third option that fits nicely in between the two, and is suitable for digital agencies that prefer a smooth website design and development process over award-winning web design.
They may instead find the best success in working with a WordPress web design and development company. In essence, such companies can leverage many of the benefits from both internal and external designers:
- Larger capacity
By working with a company that offers WordPress web design services, you tap into a larger pool of WordPress web designers than what you would be able to support on your own. When you sell many website projects at once, you can start them all and have them designed simultaneously by your web design partner to maintain acceptable deadlines for your clients. - Fewer suppliers to coordinate with
You don’t have to handle different suppliers that are dependent on each other’s work and may put blame on each other if something goes wrong. With the same company doing design and development, it’s all in their hands to resolve. - Effective collaboration between designers and developers
If you let the same company handle both web design and web development, their designers and developers can communicate around “design intent” and resolve uncertainties in how to code the designs into WordPress websites. - Designed for development
A company taking responsibility for both design and development will have the incentive to design smartly so that development works out well. There are many tricks and guidelines for designers to follow that can greatly improve the subsequent development process. - Great communication skills
If you find a good web design company, they’ll be able to communicate effectively with your team in English over email, Slack, or calls. - Dependable results
With a company taking responsibility to be your go-to partner for web design, you can expect consistency in the results. Their designers will be working in a team and be hired with the same attention to detail and requirements. - More cost-effective
Outsourced WordPress design work can be much cheaper than hiring internal designers. In addition, you only need to pay for the work that you need to be done.
Conclusions
Most digital agencies rely on their own designers or freelancers to create web designs for their clients, and for good reasons. Depending on an agency’s priorities and processes, one or the other (or a combination of the two) may be the obvious choice.
But many large digital agencies struggle with hiring and keeping highly skilled WordPress web designers on their teams. And many small agencies cannot afford to hire WordPress web designers at all and have to rely on freelancers, which often comes with availability and consistency problems.
As a third option, digital agencies can partner with a WordPress web design and development company and find this an attractive alternative to hiring internal web designers and working with freelancers. Especially if they want good results at an affordable price and with minimal headaches along the way.
If you want to learn more about how this third option could work for your agency, read more about our WordPress web design services and contact our team for a free consultation.
