A cheap web design agency without a design portfolio is like an art gallery without pictures. Website designers need to show their potential customers what they can do for them – or those customers will go elsewhere.Modern web design is based on two fundamental things: simplicity, and relevance. Both of which need to be encapsulated in a format that delivers its message extremely quickly. Research shows that site users who don’t find out
a) what a site is about; and
b) why it is relevant to their searches; in less than 30 seconds, are liable to go elsewhere. Ergo, a cheap web design agency without a portfolio to show prospective clients is likely to find those clients going off in search of a different service provider.
If you come to a website designers’ site, what’s the first thing you expect to see? Evidence that the designer in question is capable of making websites that are simple and relevant – in other words, websites that work.
The first element in any decent web designer’s portfolio, then, is his or her own site. If you visit a cheap web design agency and its’ own site is not very easy to use, then your chances of having it make you a site that works, are slim.
It’s important for a website designers’ site to contain relevant examples of industry specific websites. A recruitment business, for example, isn’t going to be interested in samples of websites that have been put together to sell eggs, or to form the online home of a local charity. Recruitment businesses want to know how a cheap web design agency is going to make a website that works for recruitment.
The portfolio needs to be as varied as possible, both to show businesses from different walks of life and trade how the website designers are likely to approach their work; and to show that the design company in question is capable of versatility. Sticking with our hypothetical recruitment consultancy for a while longer: not every recruitment agency wants a site that looks the same. A high level corporate recruitment agency, for example, might want something that looks severe and professional; while a recruitment agency that bases its business on travellers looking for casual bar work is going to want something bright and vibrant. A cheap web design agency needs to be able to show the variety of its palette as well as its ability to cater for the needs of different trades.
As a consumer of corporate websites, a company looking for the right website designers to make its online home is likely to choose an outfit that can walk the walk as well as talking the talk. A portfolio of designs is the only way to show that you can do what you say you can.
