Does your web design agency need to be local?

What are the benefits of working with a local web design agency?

There are practical advantages to working with an agency nearby. Whether they matter will depend on the business, the project and how you prefer to work.

1. Face-to-face conversations are easier

Video calls have made geography much less important, and many conversations can be handled perfectly well remotely. But there are still situations where getting the right people around a table is useful.

This is particularly true during the early stages of a project, when the discussion may range well beyond colours, page layouts and website functionality. There may be several people within the organisation who need to contribute, particularly where the website touches different parts of the business.

Being nearby simply makes those conversations easier to arrange when meeting in person would be useful.

2. The agency can visit your business

Sometimes it is useful to see the organisation the website is intended to represent.

For a manufacturer, that might mean seeing how products are made, stored and sold. For a wedding venue, it can mean seeing how the property, accommodation and customer experience fit together. For a retailer or service business, a visit may reveal details that are difficult to appreciate from a brief or video call.

It can also help answer practical questions about how information is managed, how customers make decisions and what happens after an enquiry. Those details can influence the content, navigation and functionality of the website.

3. Photography and content production can be more straightforward

A website rarely consists of design and code alone. Photography, video, copywriting and other content can have just as much influence over how well it represents a business.

Working with an agency nearby can make organising those elements easier. Visiting your premises to gather information, direct photography or coordinate other content is simpler when it doesn’t involve travelling across the country.

For businesses where the people, premises, products or production process are an important part of the story, good original content can be considerably more useful than generic stock imagery.

4. Local knowledge can be useful when your market is local

If most of your customers come from a defined geographical area, familiarity with that area can help.

That might include knowledge of the places you serve, how people describe those locations, competitors operating nearby and the geographical searches potential customers make.

This can be useful for local SEO too, although proximity isn’t a substitute for SEO experience. Local search also depends on factors such as your Google Business Profile, reviews, location information, website content and an understanding of how people actually search for the services you provide.

When does location matter less?

The more specialist the requirement becomes, the less useful geography may be as a way of choosing an agency.

A relatively straightforward website for a locally focused business may be conveniently handled by a capable agency nearby. But if the project involves unusual functionality, ecommerce, large amounts of product information or integration with other business systems, relevant experience may be considerably more important.

Our work with Hydrastore, for example, involves a WordPress and WooCommerce website containing an extensive catalogue of hydraulic products. Behind the website, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is used to manage product, pricing, stock and order information.

For a project like that, ecommerce and integration experience matters considerably more than the distance between the client and its agency.

The same applies on a smaller scale. An unusual booking process, specialist product catalogue, existing CRM or another operational requirement may all make experience of a comparable problem more useful than proximity.

Local web design agency vs remote agency: what should you actually compare?

Location is better treated as one part of the decision rather than the starting point. There are several things worth considering whether an agency is around the corner or at the other end of the country.

Can they demonstrate relevant experience?

A portfolio can tell you whether you like an agency’s design work, but appearance alone doesn’t tell you much about what those websites were required to do.

Look for evidence that the agency has dealt with requirements relevant to your own. That doesn’t necessarily mean finding another client in exactly the same sector.

If you have thousands of technical products, has the agency worked with complex product information before? If your website needs to exchange information with another business system, can they show you integrations they have developed? If you’re concerned about enquiries or sales, can they demonstrate how they use analytics and search data to investigate what is happening?

Comparable problems can be more useful evidence than comparable-looking websites.

Can they explain their recommendations?

You shouldn’t need to become a web developer to commission a website.

An agency should be able to explain why it is recommending a particular approach, what alternatives are available and what the practical trade-offs are in terms of cost, flexibility, performance, maintenance and future development.

This is particularly useful when deciding between established software and bespoke development. Custom development isn’t automatically better, but neither is an off-the-shelf solution if it requires awkward compromises or creates additional work elsewhere in the business.

Ask why something is being recommended. A useful answer should go further than simply telling you that it is the agency’s preferred platform or usual way of working.

Can they work with the systems you already use?

For established organisations, a website may need to work alongside systems that are already important to the business.

Product information might be maintained in an ERP, customer relationships in a CRM, properties in specialist agency software or stock in another internal system. Re-entering the same information separately into a website creates additional administration and opportunities for the different systems to disagree.

If that applies to your business, ask how the agency has dealt with similar situations before and whether it has experience working with the systems involved.

What happens after the website launches?

It’s worth knowing who will look after the website once the initial project is complete.

You may only need occasional technical support and updates. In other cases, the website will continue to change as products, services and customer behaviour change. Search data or analytics may identify things worth improving, marketing activity may create new requirements, or the website may eventually need to connect with other systems within the business.

Ask what ongoing support is available, who will provide it and whether the agency is equipped to continue developing the website if your requirements change.

Can you work well together?

This is difficult to judge from a proposal or portfolio, but it matters.

Website projects involve decisions, questions, compromises and sometimes disagreement. You need to be comfortable discussing the business openly with the people working on the project, and confident that they will explain their reasoning and challenge an assumption when there is a good reason to do so.

It is also worth finding out who will actually be doing the work. The people involved in the initial conversations aren’t necessarily the people you will be dealing with once the project begins.

Being local can make developing that working relationship easier, particularly when meeting in person is useful. But geography doesn’t create a good working relationship on its own.

What should you ask a web design agency before appointing them?

Most agencies will be able to give sensible answers to general questions about their process, communication and support. More revealing questions ask them to explain a decision or demonstrate something they have actually done.

• Who will actually be working on our project?
• Why are you recommending this particular approach or technology?
• Can you show us a project where you’ve dealt with a comparable requirement?

The answers won’t tell you everything, but they should give you a better idea of who you would be working with, how they make decisions and whether the experience being presented in the sales process is backed up by work they can demonstrate.

Is a local web design agency better for local SEO?

Not simply because it is local.

An agency based in the same area may have useful knowledge of the local market, but local SEO still requires an understanding of how people search and what influences local search visibility.

That can include the content and structure of the website, your Google Business Profile, reviews, accurate business and location information, relevant local content and the search terms potential customers actually use.

If local search is important to your business, ask the agency what it would investigate and what relevant SEO work it can demonstrate rather than assuming proximity provides the expertise.

Why work with a web design agency in Sudbury?

Brown & Brown is based in Sudbury on the Suffolk and Essex border. That makes it easy for us to meet clients across Suffolk, Essex and East Anglia, visit their businesses and coordinate work such as photography and video when required.

We also work with organisations across the UK, particularly where a project involves requirements we have relevant experience of, including ecommerce, bespoke web development, search and integration with other business systems.

So if you’re looking for an agency nearby, we’re local to businesses across this part of East Anglia. If you’re considering working with us from further afield, distance generally isn’t an obstacle.

So, should you choose a local web design agency?

Being local can make some things easier: meeting face-to-face, visiting your business, producing original content and understanding a local market.

But it shouldn’t outweigh relevant experience, good communication or the ability to demonstrate that an agency can handle the requirements of your project.

If the right agency happens to be nearby, that’s an advantage. It isn’t a qualification in itself.

If you’re based in Suffolk, Essex or further afield and you’re considering a new website, talk to us about your project.