How To Hire A Web Design Firm?
January 14, 2011 6:47 AM Subscribe
I'm looking for current practice in hiring a web design agency.
We're in the process of a big site rewrite (new CMS, new content, new photography). We've always done our own web design in-house but now we'd like to hire an external agency to move it from good to truly great.
Having never hired one, I'm just looking for some help in normal best practice:
Assuming I've identified, say, 5-6 agencies I like
We're in the process of a big site rewrite (new CMS, new content, new photography). We've always done our own web design in-house but now we'd like to hire an external agency to move it from good to truly great.
Having never hired one, I'm just looking for some help in normal best practice:
Assuming I've identified, say, 5-6 agencies I like
- Do web agencies pitch or do we just have to go off past work/vibe? Do we arrange meetings with all of them?
- How important are face-to-face meetings, or is web conferencing standard nowadays?
- I have no real idea about pricing. Some agencies ask you for a budget upfront. What is a rough figure for top-end site design (it's a big site, but I guess we're talking maybe half a dozen main page templates and a lot of typography and design elements for things like forms, FAQs, tables, company blog, photo galleries etc). All technical work and the actual build will be carried out by us. I know this sounds a bit "how long is a piece of string", but if we give a budget of 10k for a design, is that too much/too little/a good starting point for discussion etc.
- What happens if their work doesn't meet our expectations: do contracts come with kill fees?
you should write an RFP (request for proposal detailing what you want, constraints/timelines/assumptions, and budget requirements), contact all of them for an initial meeting, and if you're both feeling the vibe have them respond to the RFP with a proposal.
posted by sweetkid at 7:28 AM on January 14, 2011
posted by sweetkid at 7:28 AM on January 14, 2011
Larger firm here.
1. All will pitch. If they won't I would pass. By pitch i mean... They will show past relevant work and be able to answer questions about the 3 Ps... personnel, process and ponies. Just to be clear, I am not talking about spec work.
2. That's really up to you. We are living in the future after all. Personally, I would do these first meetings face-to-face whenever possible.
3. If you know your budget is $10K, you really should find a way of conveying that (roughly at least) fairly early in the process. I have been involved in full on pitches where we come up with an estimate for $40K only to find out that their budget is $3K.
Your budget sounds reasonable. You are having them stop at PSDs and are internally finishing up after that, right? That is something I would be very clear about. Cause "just design" could mean that they build the entire site and you just hook in the forms/database driven content.
4. That really depends on what you both agree on. You could ask for 2 quick concepts and agree to part ways after that. However, you have less to trim off though since you are asking only for design.
Usually once you pick a firm, you finish with that firm. If they need to do more concepts or revisions that is much more common than just pulling the plug. Ideally you should be able to tell enough about what you are going to be getting from their portfolio. The other intangibles (are they flakes, will they deliver on time) are usually sussed out in the vetting/interview process.
posted by rdurbin at 7:34 AM on January 14, 2011
1. All will pitch. If they won't I would pass. By pitch i mean... They will show past relevant work and be able to answer questions about the 3 Ps... personnel, process and ponies. Just to be clear, I am not talking about spec work.
2. That's really up to you. We are living in the future after all. Personally, I would do these first meetings face-to-face whenever possible.
3. If you know your budget is $10K, you really should find a way of conveying that (roughly at least) fairly early in the process. I have been involved in full on pitches where we come up with an estimate for $40K only to find out that their budget is $3K.
Your budget sounds reasonable. You are having them stop at PSDs and are internally finishing up after that, right? That is something I would be very clear about. Cause "just design" could mean that they build the entire site and you just hook in the forms/database driven content.
4. That really depends on what you both agree on. You could ask for 2 quick concepts and agree to part ways after that. However, you have less to trim off though since you are asking only for design.
Usually once you pick a firm, you finish with that firm. If they need to do more concepts or revisions that is much more common than just pulling the plug. Ideally you should be able to tell enough about what you are going to be getting from their portfolio. The other intangibles (are they flakes, will they deliver on time) are usually sussed out in the vetting/interview process.
posted by rdurbin at 7:34 AM on January 14, 2011
Disclaimer: I'm solo, not an agency; answers may differ if you're dealing with larger firms.
1. Portfolio, demonstrated experience and knowledge of whatever your market niche is, and vibe. Don't ever expect mockups on spec.
2. Depends on location -- if you're in the same city, face to face is fairly common for at least the initial meeting; if you're not, it's not. If you do do a face to face with an agency, bear in mind that the person you're meeting with is almost certainly not the person who will be doing the actual design work, and may or may not be your main contact going forward; focus more on the portfolio than the personality.
3. Just as a point of reference, $10K would buy about two weeks of my time. For a solo guy, this is a middling-to-high rate; agencies have more overhead so tend to cost more. For a pure PSD-only design, iterating on an existing site and not starting from scratch (and assuming your existing design doesn't suck so much that it's a complete do-over), and assuming you're not looking for anything especially intricate or time consuming (no animation, video, or custom photography, for instance), that would be well within the right ballpark if your requirements are clear and you don't keep changing your mind about what you want. (It always takes a lot more time to work with clients who don't know what they're doing; you sound like you know what you're doing.) You'll be able to find designers who'll want ten times that much, of course, if you look hard enough.
4. I don't do this. But I've always just billed by the hour, never on a contracted flat rate; if a client needed to cancel halfway through a job for any reason, I'd bill for time already served, no more. (I can't remember that ever happening -- it's much more common for the jobs to get bigger as they go, rarely if ever do they get smaller -- but that's what I'd do if it did happen.) It may be more common for larger firms who have a payroll they need to meet and schedules they need to keep filled.
posted by ook at 7:47 AM on January 14, 2011
1. Portfolio, demonstrated experience and knowledge of whatever your market niche is, and vibe. Don't ever expect mockups on spec.
2. Depends on location -- if you're in the same city, face to face is fairly common for at least the initial meeting; if you're not, it's not. If you do do a face to face with an agency, bear in mind that the person you're meeting with is almost certainly not the person who will be doing the actual design work, and may or may not be your main contact going forward; focus more on the portfolio than the personality.
3. Just as a point of reference, $10K would buy about two weeks of my time. For a solo guy, this is a middling-to-high rate; agencies have more overhead so tend to cost more. For a pure PSD-only design, iterating on an existing site and not starting from scratch (and assuming your existing design doesn't suck so much that it's a complete do-over), and assuming you're not looking for anything especially intricate or time consuming (no animation, video, or custom photography, for instance), that would be well within the right ballpark if your requirements are clear and you don't keep changing your mind about what you want. (It always takes a lot more time to work with clients who don't know what they're doing; you sound like you know what you're doing.) You'll be able to find designers who'll want ten times that much, of course, if you look hard enough.
4. I don't do this. But I've always just billed by the hour, never on a contracted flat rate; if a client needed to cancel halfway through a job for any reason, I'd bill for time already served, no more. (I can't remember that ever happening -- it's much more common for the jobs to get bigger as they go, rarely if ever do they get smaller -- but that's what I'd do if it did happen.) It may be more common for larger firms who have a payroll they need to meet and schedules they need to keep filled.
posted by ook at 7:47 AM on January 14, 2011
If you have a budget of 10,000, I would hire a freelance designer instead of an agency. Be up front about your budget, because this type of job can easily be priced at over 100,000 at agencies. I realize that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. My experience may be unusual though, I created RFPs for extremely large companies (e.g. IBM).
posted by xammerboy at 8:39 AM on January 14, 2011
posted by xammerboy at 8:39 AM on January 14, 2011
Sort-of derail, but I'd like to congratulate Hartster on being the first person I can think of who's asked MeFi about hiring for web design, who actually meant web design. Nearly everyone else needs both design and development and doesn't know the difference.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 1:54 PM on January 15, 2011
posted by AmbroseChapel at 1:54 PM on January 15, 2011
Response by poster: Slightly belated follow-up: genuine thanks to everybody for your advice: it's at least clarified in my mind how the process is going to work. We'll be drawing up a RFP and sending it out: a few agencies have their own on their website, but I assume a general RFP would be acceptable to most people (assuming it's comprehensive and sensible and not just "want a site like Apple's").
xammerboy's point about using freelance designers rather than agencies is well-taken, and a few of the people on my shortlist already match that description.
Being upfront with the budget makes sense. I'm happy to finish off with PSDs; in an ideal world, we'd have HTML for (at least some) template(s), but really that comes down to the complexity of the site and what they can work with in the budget: if it's going to add 50% onto the cost we can just spend the time wrestling with IE6 ourselves (I know, but as a corporate site it at least needs to pass in IE6, even if not pixel perfect; the dozen visitors last month who used IE 5.5 or under are going to have to just like it or lump it)
posted by Hartster at 11:45 AM on January 18, 2011
xammerboy's point about using freelance designers rather than agencies is well-taken, and a few of the people on my shortlist already match that description.
Being upfront with the budget makes sense. I'm happy to finish off with PSDs; in an ideal world, we'd have HTML for (at least some) template(s), but really that comes down to the complexity of the site and what they can work with in the budget: if it's going to add 50% onto the cost we can just spend the time wrestling with IE6 ourselves (I know, but as a corporate site it at least needs to pass in IE6, even if not pixel perfect; the dozen visitors last month who used IE 5.5 or under are going to have to just like it or lump it)
posted by Hartster at 11:45 AM on January 18, 2011
I work at a very small (3-4 people on most projects) agency. Have worked at other, larger agencies before.
Do web agencies pitch or do we just have to go off past work/vibe?
They should pitch if you want them to. If that makes you most comfortable, go for it. But good *small* agencies will have maybe one person who's really good at pitching, and the rest have no idea how a good pitch works. Usually.
Do we arrange meetings with all of them?
That's common but if there are too many, usually our clients try to weed out the worst fits first.
How important are face-to-face meetings, or is web conferencing standard nowadays?
At least one face-to-face is crucial for us when we're working team-to-team. But it can depend on the type of creative output -- are we trying to get a sense for your organization, or can we do a bunch of technical stuff first and then spend time on that? Questions like that would determine when and how we'd get together.
In my experience, most agencies don't spend a lot of time web conferencing except with their own people.
I have no real idea about pricing.
You're not alone! Many don't.
Some agencies ask you for a budget upfront.
Yep, it gets pretty old to have potential clients going back and forth. These are the smarter agencies. If they detect you haven't spent much time doing homework here, or are shopping on price, some agencies will even withdraw bids and move on to pitching new work to their established clients.
What is a rough figure for top-end site design (it's a big site, but I guess we're talking maybe half a dozen main page templates and a lot of typography and design elements for things like forms, FAQs, tables, company blog, photo galleries etc).
Look at your competitors first. Try to establish how much they're spending. This can be crucial and if it gets raised by higher-ups before you figure it out, it can make you look bad. Your CEO is not going to like hearing that you spent $40K trying to compete with a $120K website.
So keep in mind that "maybe a half-dozen this or that, some of these, etc." is going to fire off alarm bells in these agencies' heads. They don't like hearing about quantity because that sends a signal that you are attempting to shop on price and dictate deliverables, when in fact 1) quantity of pages or templates might not change the price by more than a few percentage points, and 2) they might send you a stunning counter-proposal that turns your project on its head -- for the better. I've done that before and hate the feeling that someone just wasted a bunch of time counting how many pages they want done.
All technical work and the actual build will be carried out by us.
They'll need to know what those two terms mean. Will they be required to work with your web host? Etc.
I know this sounds a bit "how long is a piece of string", but if we give a budget of 10k for a design, is that too much/too little/a good starting point for discussion etc.
The design side is going to depend on who you hire and what they think they'll be doing. If they're giving you a "look", yeah, 10K wouldn't be embarrassing. If they're doing branding work for you, that could be much more expensive but they'll want to know what else you're going to do with their work. If they're branding your website but nothing else, they might feel like they're being asked to give you a half-built brand. If they're doing branding plus other forms of problem solving for you, that goes higher.
I tell most of my clients that they always have a comfort zone if they can't think of a budget. We explore comfort zones and I put some feelers out there in our conversations to see how they respond. Agencies will do the same with you.
What happens if their work doesn't meet our expectations: do contracts come with kill fees?
Sure, some do, some don't. Please think through these scenarios, as you'll usually be given opportunities to approve the work at well-delineated milestones. What sorts of things are you afraid of? I would write it all down.
Good luck!
posted by circular at 2:20 PM on February 23, 2011
Do web agencies pitch or do we just have to go off past work/vibe?
They should pitch if you want them to. If that makes you most comfortable, go for it. But good *small* agencies will have maybe one person who's really good at pitching, and the rest have no idea how a good pitch works. Usually.
Do we arrange meetings with all of them?
That's common but if there are too many, usually our clients try to weed out the worst fits first.
How important are face-to-face meetings, or is web conferencing standard nowadays?
At least one face-to-face is crucial for us when we're working team-to-team. But it can depend on the type of creative output -- are we trying to get a sense for your organization, or can we do a bunch of technical stuff first and then spend time on that? Questions like that would determine when and how we'd get together.
In my experience, most agencies don't spend a lot of time web conferencing except with their own people.
I have no real idea about pricing.
You're not alone! Many don't.
Some agencies ask you for a budget upfront.
Yep, it gets pretty old to have potential clients going back and forth. These are the smarter agencies. If they detect you haven't spent much time doing homework here, or are shopping on price, some agencies will even withdraw bids and move on to pitching new work to their established clients.
What is a rough figure for top-end site design (it's a big site, but I guess we're talking maybe half a dozen main page templates and a lot of typography and design elements for things like forms, FAQs, tables, company blog, photo galleries etc).
Look at your competitors first. Try to establish how much they're spending. This can be crucial and if it gets raised by higher-ups before you figure it out, it can make you look bad. Your CEO is not going to like hearing that you spent $40K trying to compete with a $120K website.
So keep in mind that "maybe a half-dozen this or that, some of these, etc." is going to fire off alarm bells in these agencies' heads. They don't like hearing about quantity because that sends a signal that you are attempting to shop on price and dictate deliverables, when in fact 1) quantity of pages or templates might not change the price by more than a few percentage points, and 2) they might send you a stunning counter-proposal that turns your project on its head -- for the better. I've done that before and hate the feeling that someone just wasted a bunch of time counting how many pages they want done.
All technical work and the actual build will be carried out by us.
They'll need to know what those two terms mean. Will they be required to work with your web host? Etc.
I know this sounds a bit "how long is a piece of string", but if we give a budget of 10k for a design, is that too much/too little/a good starting point for discussion etc.
The design side is going to depend on who you hire and what they think they'll be doing. If they're giving you a "look", yeah, 10K wouldn't be embarrassing. If they're doing branding work for you, that could be much more expensive but they'll want to know what else you're going to do with their work. If they're branding your website but nothing else, they might feel like they're being asked to give you a half-built brand. If they're doing branding plus other forms of problem solving for you, that goes higher.
I tell most of my clients that they always have a comfort zone if they can't think of a budget. We explore comfort zones and I put some feelers out there in our conversations to see how they respond. Agencies will do the same with you.
What happens if their work doesn't meet our expectations: do contracts come with kill fees?
Sure, some do, some don't. Please think through these scenarios, as you'll usually be given opportunities to approve the work at well-delineated milestones. What sorts of things are you afraid of? I would write it all down.
Good luck!
posted by circular at 2:20 PM on February 23, 2011
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To answer your questions:
1. They shouldn't (at least not for free) and you shouldn't ask for it--spec work says their work has no value. Any firm that would be worth working with would not participate in a free pitch.
2. You should at least talk with all of them, either in person (still the best) or on the phone, video chat, etc.
3. The most efficient way to do it is to let them know your budget (and deliverables and schedule) and ask what can be done within those restrictions.
4. They should. Ours do. Make sure yours does too.
posted by notclosed at 7:22 AM on January 14, 2011