Finding the Best Custom Web Development Agency: An Ultimate Guide

Think of a website. A virtual place where you meet your customers and take engagements further. In today’s digital era, a website is an indispensable asset to deliver a strong marketing message and gain loyalty from customers. But what if the design is unattractive, the speed is poor, the functionality is unresponsive or broken? You may lose visitors, perpetually tarnish your brand value and curtail your business growth.

To develop an attractive custom website, you need all the features and capabilities to engage with your customers and drive growth. For this, you need a professional web development agency that will take care of your unique development needs and further provide insights to make a fructuous brand presence.

What is Custom Web Development?

Custom web development is defined as the development of a website with custom features and functionalities, built to connect specific business and customer unique needs. Custom web solutions are focused on your business objective, target audience, products, and services. Put simply, customized web service reshapes your business vision through optimized coding, latest tools, and technologies into a fully-fledged web solution.

A custom-built website will often save time for future upgrades as needed according to the market and customer requirements aligned with business goals. It might take longer to build a custom featured web application or website, but your website will be an excellent solution to cater to your customers with a unique experience.

For example, American Geophysical Union (AGU), an international nonprofit scientific organization, built a customized web platform on Sitecore. Icreon as the leading web development company in New York has helped the association to consolidate data of a diverse membership base of 62,000+ members across 144 countries. The association now offers direct access and connectivity to the right information at the right time, which in turn creates new experiences for its members and users.

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How COVID-19 is playing a crucial role spurring up web revenue opportunities

The web development for businesses is growing at a cracking pace since all businesses require a virtual presence, especially in the pandemic-stricken world.

As the pandemic keeps imposing unique stressors across all industries, enterprises which were already doing well in the digital world are going above and beyond to thrive in the future.

Why is it difficult to select the right web development company?

Selecting a web development agency that understands your business needs and delivers results in time and budget is not always easy.

Today, the market is saturated with a myriad of web design and development companies. Very often you need to spend a great deal of time to wade through the options to select the right one. From the do it yourself (DIY) websites to the head honchos riding the web world with great stride, how do you know which one is the most reliable one to meet your unique business requirement.

Another reason is each web development company has a different scope of services. And these scopes are defined on the basis of their own business processes. Because of different models and processes in place, they provide certain qualities or features at different price ranges.

Tips for Choosing the Best Custom Web Development Company

Now comes the most important part - selecting the best web development agency that will suit your web project and business requirements. We will cover the following seven tips to choose the right web development partner to personalize your customer experiences and grow online.

Tip 1: Determine what exactly you want

Before deciding to partner with any website development agency, you need to be clear about what exactly you want. Custom development services include both front-end and back-end, combining aesthetics and functionality to please your customers. Work out what kind of website or features you want. Do you need a development from scratch or enhancements to the website? Back-end integration, database migration, or development of a chat-bot service. Just like your business, a website should reflect your business objectives and futuristic plans. With clear expectations, you can ask the company to deliver as per your requirements.

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Tip 2: Take a quick glance at the Company’s Work Portfolio

Next important thing is to evaluate the experience of the website development team that you are taking into consideration. Assessing the quality and diversity of the work will help you understand whether this agency is going to fulfill your web project requirements or not. A company’s work portfolio demonstrates a complete picture of what kind of projects handled in the past and their expertise areas. Additionally, you can walk through the work of a web development company on specific platforms like GitHub, Behance, and Dribble.

Tip 3: Look for the Testimonials

Once you have settled down with the work portfolio or found similar work that can fulfil your needs, look at testimonials from their previous clients. For that, you can head to Clutch website. This is a renowned website to find out reviews or customer feedback about any company across the globe. Check the overall rating of the company and see if they have any awards and recognition. Other than that, you can walk through the social media profiles of your future agency to know their reputation in the market. Such research will give you a hint about their rank among other adversaries. The reviews may be biased, it is preferred to go through the development process before making a final decision.

Tip 4: Evaluate the Quality of the Company’s Website

Another important tip is to check the website of the company. This is important to know the quality standards of the team working in-house, technical competence, and responsibility. Pay attention to the website design, usability of the website, features, and quality of the content they update on the website. Make sure that their website design should be up to date. If the company doesn’t follow the latest tools and technologies, best practices, then it is a sign to not choose that web development company.

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Tip 5: Checkout for Additional Services

Initially, you may not need the additional upgrades and features in your web project. But what happens, in the long run, is you need those features to keep up your customer's evolving needs and market upthrust. These services could be SEO, customer journey mapping, loyalty strategy design, data migration, etc. While choosing a company, make sure that they provide additional services for future scalability and upgrades. This way, you will be able to focus on other important areas of your business.

Tip 6: Make sure the Agency is Responsive

Responsiveness is one of the crucial factors while selecting a web development agency. Contact the agency to check how responsive they are for any project-related request. See how fast and polite they are while addressing your query. You can allow them 24-48 hours to answer your request. If the company is interested in your business query, then it is a sign that you may go further to partner with them. If they keep you waiting for any longer than that or try to hard sell, you should be cautious of these steps.

Tip 7: Factor in all the cost and support

Although you wish to onboard an affordable company for your next web project, it is important to not compromise on quality. Don’t get into the trap of those companies who promise to deliver your project at low prices. A well-established web development agency charges a bit higher for the quality of work they deliver. Do factor in all the costs beyond the initial design and development. There are ongoing charges that should be studied before the engagement.

Hosting: Hosting is an important aspect of your digital presence and typically every development company charges for this service. Ideally, you receive what you pay for i.e., website uptime. Don’t skip this cost as you want your website to be up all the time.

Ongoing support: A website needs continuous maintenance and support to ensure optimal performance. Some agencies include a certain level of support, while others incur costs for any change. So, it is better to go in-depth about the tiered pricing based on the type of professional giving support on your project. Study the plan for those costs thoroughly.

Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Development Company

A well-built web application or website clearly states what products and services you cater for in the market. How your business connects with your target audience and prospects. Top web developers know the importance of credibility and trust in the development process to establish a long-term relationship with the company.

However, you may still have some questions that need to be answered. We’ve jotted down five important questions that will give you an idea about the workflow of any development agency.

Do you have case studies?

A professional web development agency will provide case studies for reference which describe the work they’ve done. This may describe the workflow of the development process from the initial steps to the finish line. Even, you may ask for the client references and connect with them separately to know about their experience for the company on a similar project.

What are the stages involved in your development process?

Well, the typical stages include requirement analysis and research, prototyping, design and development, coding, and testing. During each stage, you will be involved in the review and feedback process. So, you may ask the agency if there is a specific team member, you’ll be in touch throughout the development stages.

How do you estimate the time for different development stages?

You can also ask for the time estimation for each of the development stages. Don’t hesitate to ask questions like what happens if the deadlines don’t meet. The time estimation for your project should be transparent and should account for any delays during the design and development stages. You should ask for the cost estimation based on the proposed time frame.

What would be my role in project development?

Agree that you’re not a professional in the development field, but you are going to be part of the team. A reliable web development agency will involve you in the discussion and keep you informed throughout the process including mockups, wireframes, prototype, to make sure they are fulfilling your requirement on time and on budget.

Ask how well the company understood your business goals?

After you’ve explained your business goals to the company, study how well they grasped the challenges and are prepared to provide any consulting assistance. The agency should be well-versed to share knowledge and experience about the ins and outs of the project.

Pro Tip: If you’ve a website built already and you need a revamp, ask if they will review, assess and analyze the gaps for possible opportunities and take these pointers into consideration before the development process.

Summing Up

When starting for a new website project or accelerating the digital amendments to the old website, signing a contract with a reliable partner is a must. Your future web development agency should be more than a vendor. Look for the qualities that you would like to have in a business partner who truly cares about your business growth and turns challenges into opportunities.

By following the aforementioned tips, it will become easier to choose the best custom web development company to take your business to new heights.

If you’re facing any challenges in website revamping or migration, fill in the contact form. We’d be more than happy to solve your web challenges.