Should I Hire a Freelancer or a Digital Agency for my Website Redesign?
After carefully weighing the decision, you’ve decided it’s time. You need to redesign your website. Once you have determined you are ready for a redesign, you have to decide whether to hire a digital marketing agency or a freelancer.
While there are some pros to hiring freelancers, such as potentially lower costs or shorter estimated timelines, there are three big reasons you need a digital marketing agency for your website redesign: Expertise, Accountability, and your business’ Future Growth.
Reason 1: Expertise
You’re hiring a whole team, not just one person.
When you hire a digital agency, you bring on a team of experienced professionals who have a wide range of expertise. While a freelancer may be skilled in design and development, a quality digital marketing agency will include search engine optimization experts to ensure your site follows the latest SEO best practices. A quality agency will also have conversion experts who can ensure your website does what it should: Convert visitors to customers!
Account managers and other agency members not directly involved in the project can objectively review the site, providing valuable user testing and feedback. This feedback can be helpful when you’re deep in the weeds of the design.
Bottom Line: The broad range of experience and expertise that a digital marketing agency offers generates more discussion and better outcomes than a single freelancer’s experience.
Reason 2: Accountability
Agencies are more accountable to you.
The flexibility of a freelancer is one of the pros of hiring them for a website redesign. However, this flexibility can also lead to issues. Freelancers do not always work with contracts, leading to potential questions of ownership of work or accountability to agreed deadlines. Reputable marketing agencies will have a standard contract customized to your unique project covering common terms and conditions and items that less experienced freelancers may overlook.
An agency also has the benefit of having multiple people who are working on your project. This allows for coverage and helps your project continue moving forward if there is an unexpected absence, illness, or emergency. This coverage minimizes project delays that may occur in these cases. Suppose a freelancer gets sick or has an emergency. In that case, there will inevitably be a delay in your project, which could affect other projects and potentially miss out on potential customers or events.
Additionally, what happens if your freelancer is offered a project that will make them more money? A reliable freelancer will maintain existing timelines and commitments. Still, some may take the more lucrative project and put yours on the back burner, or worse, stop responding entirely and leave you in the lurch.
Bottom Line: With a reputation to maintain, an established digital marketing agency will be more accountable to you, ensuring your project is completed professionally and without undue delays. If there are any questions, there are contracts and accountability built into the agreement.
Reason 3: Future Growth
Agencies offer additional services to help grow your business.
Right now, your mind is on your website redesign. But what happens when you launch your beautiful new site? Are you doing anything to announce it? Are you running ads to drive qualified traffic? Are you actively working to improve your conversions and turning that traffic into customers?
Freelancers are great for their ability to hone a few specific skills to a fine point. But outside of those skills, most freelancers don’t have the resources, time, or ability to offer a full suite of marketing services. From social media management and email marketing to PPC and content strategy, a trusted digital marketing agency has the additional services that take your website to the next level.
Bottom Line: A quality digital marketing agency has the scope of services to design a website and drive qualified traffic and help you convert that traffic into customers. Whether now or in the future, your business will have more marketing needs, and an established relationship makes things much more manageable.
What Now?
Now that you know why you need a digital marketing agency and not just a freelancer, check out our piece on how much an agency costs, or reach out to discuss your business needs and see if we’re a fit!
