Not all websites are equal. Just like people, a stunning website design can be a mess under the surface. The best websites look good and are built to perform for your goals.
Worthwhile professionals should customize a website package to authentically reflect your brand, perform well online, and speak to your audience to drive action.
How can you spot a good professional website design package? The best team can cover every aspect, from design and user experience to development and search engine optimization.
Forge Apollo provides website design based in Delaware County, PA. Today, we’re exploring what you should look for in a website design package.
1. On-Brand Design from a Website Designer
Obviously, you want to choose a website design agency whose previous designs you like. But when evaluating designs, think about your brand.
A website is one of the first impressions a potential customer gets of your brand, so it’s important to make it authentic.
A great website design package includes an experienced website designer who can customize a design for your brand.
Website designers and graphic designers are not interchangeable. While one designer may have both skills, not all website designers are graphic designers, and vice versa. Website designers design how a website looks and how it works (UX), and graphic designers create visual content for print or digital media (not website designs).
If you don’t have the budget for a fully customized from-scratch design, that’s okay. A good website designer can pick pre-made template design options that reflect your brand. As long as the base design is a good fit, the developer can easily swap out the colors, text, and logos to reflect your branding.
Forge Apollo’s website designers can either create fully customized designs or help choose the best template sites to help our clients’ brands shine. In fact, one of our recent custom designs is a Webby Honoree.
2. Performance-Based Development
While you want your website to look good, you need it to operate and perform well. That comes down to the development, i.e. all of the coding and techy stuff behind the scenes.
A great website design package includes website developers who are experts in their field and utilize the most up-to-date optimization techniques.
Your website’s development affects several factors, such as:
- Functionality
- Website security
- Loading speeds
- User experience
- Accessibility
- Mobile Responsiveness
- SEO
Needless to say, you need someone who knows what they’re doing and can customize your build for your goals.
It’s best if you can find developers who are experts in one platform. You know the saying– ”a jack of all trades is a master of none.” By focusing on one content management system (CMS), a developer is more likely to know the best techniques on that platform.
For example, Forge Apollo’s website developers specialize in WordPress development, the industry’s most used CMS. WordPress is open-source, free, and popular for a reason.
Our lead developer, Rabeah Abbas, prefers WordPress over other options “because of how highly flexible and cost-effective it is. It has a large ecosystem of plugins and developer tools, making it a great platform for building both simple and complex custom sites. It’s widely supported, familiar to many, and easy to set up with popular marketing integrations. It’s tough to beat its combination of extensibility for developers and ease of use for end users.”
Read through our deep dive to learn more about WordPress vs other CMS options.
3. Ability to Customize
A website is an investment, and you deserve it to meet your unique needs. The best website packages will accommodate your desired features.
For example, one of the benefits of creating websites in WordPress is the customization we can offer our clients. Whether it’s finding the right plugin or creating custom code, our developers can offer options for almost any request.
4. Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the process of making your site visible in search engines, like Google. With the introduction of AI chats and searches, SEO tactics also help improve visibility in AI experiences.
Proper SEO includes actions like:
- Strategic keyword research
- Proper development to allow search engines to scan and understand your site
- Natural usage of strategic keywords
- On-page elements like headings, structured data, and alt text
- And more!
Even if new customers discovering you online isn’t a goal, SEO still matters. At a base level, SEO helps your site appear when people search for you by name. Without basic optimization on your website, your website won’t appear.
Forge Apollo’s website packages include SEO strategy and optimization, both in on-page elements and back-end development.
5. Expert, Human Copywriting
You need text on your website for accessibility, SEO, and user experience. Effective copywriting connects with your audience and drives action.
One study found that 82.1% of consumers detect AI-written content some of the time and are more skeptical of it.
Humans are still the best copywriters because they can capture tone, nuance, and experience better than AI. Writers can use AI tools to support them, like a grammar-checking tool. But the content should be written by a human.
Forge Apollo is proud to only use human copywriters (like me!).
6. Custom Visuals
Custom visual elements, like photography and video assets, make a website POP. Actual imagery of your team, products, or offices makes your site feel more authentic. For example, all of the images on this blog feature our team members.
Forge Apollo uniquely offers an in-house video production team. That means we can capture photography and video for your website and ensure it’s optimized for our exact needs.
7. Account / Project Manager
You don’t want to feel like your project is stuck in limbo. The best website design agencies offer a dedicated account or project manager for your project. This person operates as a clear point of contact and oversees timelines to keep things on track.
Forge Apollo provides all of our clients with a personal account manager who is available via phone, email, and Zoom to answer your questions and keep things running smoothly.
8. Cohesive Oversight
Even with a project manager, some teams get siloed and produce an end product that lacks cohesion and doesn’t meet your goals. Choose a team that has cohesive oversight to keep all team members informed and your goals top of mind.
At Forge Apollo, our Director of Digital Marketing personally oversees each project’s milestones to ensure the team operates cohesively and produces a website that meets each client’s individual goals.
9. Built-In Reporting
Your website is a hub of valuable data and insights, like how visitors found you and what actions they took. Choose a package that provides these analytics as a standard.
Our team believes that everyone deserves website analytics, so we configure Google Analytics and Google Search Console as a standard on all of our websites.
10. CRM Integration
If your website is a source of leads, you want your website-to-lead experience to be seamless. Choose a package that offers direct integration with your CRM to deliver your leads where you need them.
Forge Apollo ensures all forms on our clients’ websites are properly connected to their CRM.
11. Ownership
You are investing in your website, and you deserve to own it! Never work with a company that holds your site hostage to keep you as a customer.
With Forge Apollo, once you pay for your website build, you own it. Since we use WordPress, you can host your site almost anywhere. We offer affordable hosting and maintenance packages for our clients, but we have no hard feelings if you decide to leave. We’ll provide what you need to transfer your website elsewhere with no fuss.
Your Ideal Professional Website Design Package
Every element of a website matters, from the visuals and text to the back-end development. To get the best website (and the most out of your money), it’s important to choose a professional website design package that takes all of these elements into consideration. Forge Apollo provides professional website design in Chester County and Delaware County, as well as across the US. Contact us today to learn more about our website packages.
