Finding the Right Local Digital Agency In order to choose the right website development agency, you ought to consider the many factors that may contribute to the decision. Before you can consider such factors, however, you ought to ask yourself, "what do I need this website to accomplish?" Here are a few examples of good goals to set for a website: • Convert users • Educate users • Entertain users • Gain feedback from users Once you’ve identified your needs, you can start sorting through the wide range of web development services available at your disposal. There are a number of things which you ought to take into account when it comes to picking the right organization for your needs. You may be tempted to merely input "best web development company" into Google, and click the top few results and you wouldn’t be too far off. It is important to remember, however, that the results you will find are likely to be among the most expensive, and sought after agencies around. Your best bet is to search for, web development agencies, such as "Local Chicago web app development company". Even then, the results that show up might not be one hundred percent relevant that is, you might need an agency whose expertise is in SEO, or specifically UX. Doing research into the expertise of a particular website design and development company can often be the most beneficial way of finding out what you need to know about them. For example, let’s say you search "best custom website development in Chicago" and Codal Inc comes up in the search results. A quick scan of Codal’s "Services" page indicates that they are highly experienced in User Experience Design, Application Development, Technology Strategy and Dedicated Teams. But what does this really mean? This is where in-depth research comes into play. It is so important to read each individual service page when choosing the right local digital agency. Returning to the Codal example - let’s dive into their User Experience Design page. The UX Design services listed here by Codal are: • • • • • •
Ideation + Exploration Interaction Design Front End Development Information + System Architecture User Research User Testing
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Visual Design
We can determine a number of things from the services listed here. For starters, Codal evidently puts a lot of emphasis on the research phase, and uses the information gained there to better craft a useroriented product. This could be beneficial if your aims are to generate conversions. If, however, you don’t care about the user, and would just like to create an online resource, you may only be interested in Codal’s front end development services. A quick analysis of Codal’s Application Development service page indicates that their development services include: • • • • • • •
Mobile app development Full stack development Hardware based development Agile | Scrum development Web Application development Quality assurance Manual | automated load testing
From this information, we can extrapolate that Codal is particularly equipped to manage the full range of development services that you might need for such a venture. Their Tech Strategy service page tells a similar story, listing: • Technical architecture • Analytic and intelligence • Big data organization • Deployment + integration • Engineering evaluations • Cloud deployment • Code reviews • Database audits What this means is, if you needed an analytics heavy, full stack, user research oriented design and development firm, then upon completion of your digital studio research, you would have determined that Codal is the right choice for you. This process will work for any digital agency, and you should try it for yourself either on Codal or on any other local digital agencies. Author Bio : Neil Patel, Neil is a freelance user experience designer located in the Chicagoland area. He comes from the great state of New York, with a degree in Web Design and Interactive Media. As a user experience designer, he oversees the entire process that users go through when navigating through a website or a mobile application. He does research to figure out what the user expects from the product, and projects
their instincts which is eventually translated into real functions of the platform. Neil’s user experience research process solves all problems before the problem ever gets to the user. As a user experience designer, Neil is in charge of: ideation and exploration, information architecture, user research + testing, interaction design, front end development, and all visual design. He focuses on the most cutting edge and aesthetically intuitive designs, he has done everything from simple web development, to specific mobile application design, ecommerce websites, and product pages. Neil designs for a visually engaging final product which will have a lasting effect. In Neil's free time, you can catch him rooting for his favourite baseball team, the New York Yankees, biking up and down Chicago’s beautiful lakeshore, and exploring new neighbourhood of the city.