You’ve decided you want a brand new B2B website - great! You know how you want it to look, you’ve seen website examples you like, and you have a broad idea of how much budget you’re investing in the project.
But here comes the tough step - how to actually choose a web design agency. According to MadebyShape, there are 2,041 web design agencies currently operating in the UK - and that number is continuing to grow.
With such a heavy investment needed in a new website, you want to make sure that you can protect your investment, create a powerful new website and, ultimately, generate ROI from your website project.
As a website agency, we’ve helped businesses generate beautiful B2B websites for many years now, and we’ve heard some horror stories from our clients about some agencies that they have employed in years past. That’s why we got our heads together to collectively come up with a list of our 16 questions and tips you should utilise before choosing a web design agency.
On the face of it, it should be easy to employ a web design agency. They have a good body of work, sell you into how they think your website should look and feel and voila - you have a brand new B2B website.
However, unfortunately, it’s not that simple. According to Performance Marketing World, more than 60% of clients have ceased or considered ceasing their relationship with an agency due to poor practice. That means that 4 in 10 clients were happy with the work their agency did.
Amongst other things, this may be for several reasons:
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. No wonder choosing a web design agency is such hard work.
That’s why you need to choose the right company from the start - ask the following questions to do that successfully.
This is probably the most obvious first step - can they actually make beautiful websites? (We will come on to the performance soon)
Every web design project starts with some objection to what you currently have in place. That may be because it doesn’t perform well, or even something as simple as it doesn’t reflect your brand. Whatever the reason, you need to make sure that any agency or freelancer you choose to employ has a track record of resolving the objection you have.
The first place to look for this, usually, is on their website. Most agencies will have a ‘work’ or ‘results’ page that you can look through and make an informed judgment about how proficient they are with their website designs. If they don’t have a body of work on their website, then make sure to request proof of concept (POC) before signing on the dotted line. That way, you have clear referrals to websites they have done.
Another thing to look at is industry expertise.
Upon researching other articles talking about this question, I saw that a number said not to look for industry-specific agencies and rather those that can complete work for a range of sectors. However, I tend to fall on the side of disagreeing with this statement. This is because, whichever business you’re in, you want to feel as if your vision for the website is understood, that your partner knows how you get leads, and what your users’ buying journey could look like from the outset as, ultimately, this is the most important function for a website.
Now, this isn’t me saying to choose an agency that uses a ‘cookie cutter’ approach for every website they design in that industry - that is a mistake. But rather choose an agency that understands how buyers in your sector want to buy and design an information architecture that works for them.
Let’s use us as an example. We have three industry specialisms - industrial and manufacturing, tech and SaaS and professional services. Each one is very different from the other. However, we understand the nuances between the three and what (roughly) the buying journey looks like for them, respectively.
We foresaw the rise in direct-to-consumer (D2C) manufacturing and spoke about it on our ‘Marketing RevUp’ podcast at length, with a new client having signed on to design a website just like that. But at the same time, we delivered a website for College Online, an education services company, which had a completely different user journey and path to conversion, leading to 2,500 website visits in just one month.
All I’m arguing here is that you shouldn’t look for industry-agnostic agencies. Just make sure that whichever agency you choose does its due diligence and takes the time to understand your customers and how they choose to purchase.
It’s important to not just look at the websites they have created at face value, but see what the client had to say about the experience of working with that website design agency.
If testimonials don’t feature on their results page or website, then you may have to look elsewhere for reviews. These can be found in directories and places like:
If there aren’t any reviews on any of them, then ask the agency for a reference before signing the contract. This will ensure that you get the ‘low-down’ before working with an agency, and you can get a clear idea of what the experience will be like and set your expectations before choosing them.
If the agency doesn’t give you the reference, then you can assume one of two things:
For us personally, we keep the majority of our reviews on our HubSpot directory page, case studies and across our website, including from our latest work with Infinity Group:
We worked with Axon Garside to develop a set of landing page templates aimed at improving conversions and ensuring brand consistency. The team brought valuable expertise to the project, helping us create a more polished and effective user journey. While there were some initial teething issues, they were receptive to feedback and worked collaboratively with us to resolve them. Overall, we’re pleased with the end result and appreciate their effort in bringing our vision to life.
- Faye Sandford, Head of Marketing at Infinity Group
This is where we get into the nitty-gritty of website design.
As mentioned, websites are well and good when they just look pretty. But understanding more about how they perform and if they’re actually generating ROI for the business is another thing.
So much so, according to KissMetrics, 47% of consumers expected a website to load in 2 seconds or less, and 40% would abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
There are several things you should look for at this stage:
All of these things are easily accessible using the right tools. The tools we use in-house to measure the websites we create are:
If a website that’s been created by a web design agency is ‘just pretty’, then usually you’ll see pitfalls in the design through these reports. Take our latest website that we have completed for Redway Networks. Our website consultant ensures that, at every stage, the website performs optimally, ultimately leading to an A GTMetrix grade.
On a similar wavelength to the previous point, you need to consider whether a web design agency creates websites with SEO in mind.
If you have a website live that doesn’t generate any organic traffic - and ultimately no conversions - what’s the point of having it at all? Unfortunately for web design agencies that don’t practice or pay attention to SEO, a pretty website won’t show up first on Google ahead of your competitors.
Most keyword research tools will help you ascertain whether the websites that an agency designs rank well. Examples of these tools include:
And so on.
All you will need to do is type in the URL of the website designed by an agency and see how well they rank for keywords for which they’re actively creating content.
I just ran our web design client, Makers, through AhRefs so I could check we ‘eat our own dog food’ and, as a technology-driven education company, I can see they’re ranking #1 for keywords within their niche such as ‘cloud engineer bootcamp’ and ‘software engineering bootcamps’ - not just brand related keywords such as ‘Makers’.
Just to be transparent here too - I don’t want this to be a chest-beating exercise for us as we’re a B2B web design agency. But we do want to highlight some of the pitfalls that you may see when choosing a web design agency and why some of our clients have been impressed with working with us. Ultimately, we have the belief that your website shouldn’t sit as a ‘brochure’, but rather be another sales arm for your business, driving new leads and revenue.
This is easily one of the first things we see when auditing existing sites. Often, websites are created without the thought of how they are going to create, nurture and convert leads, with only the ‘Contact Us’ page as a mechanism for B2B lead generation.
Websites need to be created with a commercial hat on, looking at where users want to consume information and how they are going to show interest in your services. You can see this in several ways on web design agency websites, such as:
If there isn’t enough of either of these, then usually a web design agency will have created this for primarily aesthetic purposes.
Another sticking point for websites that have been created without a post-site audit or with due diligence regarding where your audience is coming from.
Despite desktop users still dominating B2B, responsive websites are still so important in the digital age, as a significant portion of your traffic, around 16-30%, comes from mobile devices. Alongside that, responsive websites are reported to have:
Make sure that when choosing a web design agency, you check how their body of work holds up on mobile devices. Just to be clear too, this doesn’t just go for how it looks on mobile (can you see there’s a trend here…), but also how fast it operates.
Google’s Page Speed Insights tool will give you an overview of this. Like the desktop function, you can test how fast a website loads on mobile and how it performs overall.
After all, you don’t want to be stuck with a website that only looks and performs well on a single device.
Coming away from overall website performance and first looks, time to dig deeper into the web design agency itself and uncover where their experience lies.
This question is ultimately dependent on the scope of your project and business, but it’s important to ascertain whether the agency has experience working towards your requirements.
For example, if you’re an enterprise-level company that requires over 100+ pages to be designed, developed and set live within a strict time frame, you don’t want to be using a web design agency that has only launched small, 6-page websites before. Likewise, if you’re an SME, you don’t want to employ an agency that only develops enterprise-level sites, as a lot of the functionality that you won’t require, you just need a website that performs well.
This is just a bit of due diligence to ensure that your web design agency can carry out the work required within the right timeframe, quality and responsiveness that you need for your project to be successful.
There is a way, however, of developing a website over time that means you can work with an agency that, even if you need hundreds of pages in the long term, still meets your requirements. We sell Growth-Driven design (GDD) websites as an option here at Axon Garside, which is where:
We deployed this with Winnow, which led to a 10x growth in traffic year on year, with their Marketing Director, David Jackson, saying:
Axon Garside’s approach to website design was one of the most refreshing I’ve come across in 20 years in the marketing business
Something to think about…
This one is more tailored to whichever content management system (CMS) you prefer using.
Again, this is based purely on your business requirements, and you should have this step in order before choosing a web design agency. Different CMS platforms will do different jobs and be more beneficial to specific business use cases. You shouldn’t be buoyed into using a CMS that doesn’t meet the requirements of your new B2B website and, therefore, shouldn’t choose a web design agency that tries to sell you into it because that’s their speciality.
We, for example, are HubSpot CMS experts. For the majority of B2B websites, HubSpot is a great solution due to the amount of tools you get integrated into it, including a CRM, sales functionality, operations and service management as well as an AI-driven content hub for your inbound marketing needs.
However, if HubSpot CMS isn’t right for you, then we’ll tell you as much - and you need to make sure your web design agency tells you this too.
Ensure you do your due diligence beforehand and pick a CMS that works best for your business and commercial goals. Once you have ascertained that, then approach an agency that specialises in creating B2B websites using that software.
Flexibility is often an afterthought when it comes to designing a website.
For most enterprise-level companies, this is not as much of a problem due to having developer resources available in-house or readily available. However, for SME, this is a question you have to ask before choosing a web design agency. If your website is built on a CMS that requires knowledge of HTML and coding to make changes, then flexibility hasn’t been taken into account when designing the website.
We always recommend using HubSpot as it’s one of the best B2B CMS out there, but options like WordPress or Webflow also exist, which harbour no-code capabilities so that anyone can make changes to the website without the need for a developer. You just need to weigh up which CMS solution enables you the ability to edit post-launch.
This step goes hand-in-hand with our other questions earlier to understand the validity of the web design agency.
You don’t want a templated or ‘cookie-cutter’ solution. You want to choose a web design agency that aims to become part of the fabric of your business and envelop itself within your buyer’s journey. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with a website that looks, feels and works exactly like your competitors.
You want to make sure that their sales and web team make an effort to dig into your buyers’ journey and prioritise the content and features that they find most important. Your website should please your prospective clients, not just look good on a B2B web design agency’s portfolio.
According to UXCam, companies that implement top design practices grow twice as fast as the industry benchmark growth rate.
As we’ve said throughout this article, and any other blogs you may have heard from us previously, your website is as much of a sales asset as your actual sales team. It sets the first impression of your brand and makes a lasting impression on your prospects. You need to ensure that your website design agency knows that too.
A good user experience ensures that, when a user is searching for the solution to their problem on a search engine, your website matches their expectations and you actively show you’re solving their pain points. Without a good user experience, someone will land on your site and not get the answers they need from your website, leading them to check out your competitors instead.
This is another reason we champion growth-driven design here. GDD leverages iterative changes over 12 months, based on UX data, to drive more conversions and unlock the potential of your B2B website.
We have a client in the professional services sector which utilises this approach currently, focusing primarily on their pay-per-click landing pages. Through regular UX research, iterations and experiments, we’ve been able to generate double the amount of conversions they had previously, whilst being able to implement these findings across high-intent pages site-wide. This shows the importance of having a data-driven approach to your website, but only if your website design agency has UX expertise.
It’s probably to phrase this another way - how much effort do they put into understanding you and your customers before presenting website designs to you?
We’re not going to tell you anymore that your website shouldn’t just be pretty -we feel like we’ve drummed that in enough in this article. However, ensuring that your website design agency does its due diligence and research beforehand is so important when it comes to driving ROI from your website.
This doesn’t have to be a time-consuming task, however. As a bare minimum, your website design agency should:
This just ensures that your website is built with your audience in mind and that it’s created with the direct goal of driving growth for your business.
This goes hand in hand with the previous point as every web design agency should have a foolproof strategy to research, design and develop a B2B website.
Choosing a web design agency without understanding their process is like building a house without looking at the blueprints. A clear, structured design and development process ensures your website is delivered on time, meets your goals, and performs effectively once live.
Agencies that follow a well-defined process, from discovery and strategy through to design, development, and ongoing optimisation, are more likely to deliver a site that not only looks good but also functions seamlessly and drives results. Without a clear process, you risk miscommunication, missed deadlines, scope creep, and a website that doesn’t meet user or business needs.
Asking this question also reveals whether they build with scalability, accessibility, and performance in mind, all of which are crucial for long-term growth. If an agency can’t clearly articulate its process, or if it sounds overly vague, that’s a red flag.
Take your instincts as a guide here. If a website design project seems like it’s going to take too short a time, then the quality is probably below par. Similarly, if a website timeline estimation is much longer than you anticipated, you need to understand why that is and if your project scope is too big or if the website design process is too slow.
We’ve spoken about this before, where we detailed how long a website design should take and our real-life experiences in building them for our clients. The one in question was the previously mentioned Makers, which took us 6 months from inception to delivery to complete. Each phase of a website design should be mapped out and gantt-ed so that not only do you have a clear idea of what is being completed, but also the amount of time it will take.
This question helps you further understand the transparency of the website design agency you are looking to employ. It helps work out whether there’s an adequate website design process for your project, or whether their timelines are simply a ‘finger in the air’ prediction.
Another overlooked aspect of choosing a web design agency is whether there’s a plan or support agreement for work to continue after the project is completed.
This question goes hand in hand with the flexibility query earlier, as you don’t want a website that’s been designed and developed but with no way for you to make changes further down the line. And, to add to this, a website which you can’t manage without an agency’s support.
To answer this, you will need to consider:
As mentioned previously, our Growth-Driven Design package enables ongoing support and optimisations through the use of data. For every web design project similar to this, there should be a strategy and roadmap in place to manage this and objectives set to ensure the plan doesn’t go off-piste.
This not only helps your website grow as you want it to, but also keeps your web design agency accountable for any ongoing work you have on the website.
Finally, when choosing a web design agency, you need to make sure that you fully understand the payment terms and pricing structure in place.
Again, this may seem fairly self-explanatory, but web design agencies tend to make this complicated for clients. This could include a ‘point-based’ pricing structure, which complicates ‘what costs what’ in terms of activities completed.
When choosing a web design agency, make sure you fully understand what you’re paying for and what activities they’re attributed to. This means you won’t get caught out further down the line with any hidden charges that don’t correlate with the work that has been completed.
Unlike other agencies, we don’t deploy a ‘points-based system’ - opting for the much simpler pounds and pennies model. This is so you know and understand exactly what you’re paying for and what you’re getting for that investment. We have worked with B2B businesses since the 70’s to improve their digital presence and create not only beautiful websites, but ones that are powerful too.
If you’re now asking not ‘how to choose a web design agency’, but rather ‘how can I get started with you’, then download our pricing guide and see how we can support you.