Don't Trust A Design Agency With Your Website Project – Episode 90

How do we help people listening to this to take something of use from this conversation?

Well, what I would say is when you go out to have a website designed, remember that design is not about making something pretty. And if you are talking to somebody who is or seems primarily fixated with making your website look good rather than function well, that is a giant red flag.

If you choose to work with a credible agency, you will finish up with a good looking website. The difference is, if you choose the right agency, you will have not only a good looking website, but a website that is helping you find new customers and grow your business.

Yeah, absolutely. And even now, when you know Dan is designing a homepage, often me and her will sit down and have a chat and I'll put like a wireframe together. And I'm like, these are the things we want to be on the page. And that is a collaborative thing. She does not kind of designing in a vacuum.

So welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Welcome to episode.

Three hundred and sixty two? Close. Twelve? I think we're on like ninety, right? Is that the one? Did I do it? Are you gonna unplug me?

Welcome to episode ninety. Ninety!

Ninety.

Yeah. We'll do something special for our centenary. Will we?

We'll get a letter from the Queen. King? Ooh.

If we got a letter from the Queen, we'd be going some. Would we? Um, so the subject today is, broadly speaking, don't trust a design agency with your website project.

Oh, this is the one where we're going to be in.

How controversial, how controversial. Um, yeah. What we're driving at is we love design agencies. Um, we, you know, Part of Red evolution is a design agency. We are very creative. We do branding, we do design, we do messaging. We do all the things connected with, um, what you might broadly call web design and broader design. Um, but what we're saying in this podcast and what we're going to discuss, we might conclude that we're completely wrong. People listening might conclude that we're completely wrong. Um, we have recently come up against, um, not come up against, we have encountered a couple of websites, um, new clients of ours and we are, uh, we're kind of in, I suppose rescue mode because their websites have predominantly been put together by design agencies, web design agencies, maybe design agencies. I'll just use as the broad term. And although design is a key component of any, you know, digital creative process, um, entrusting your website to a design agency in its entirety is possibly not going to end well. And I'm going to stop speaking in a minute, but I haven't stopped yet. I'm just going to stop now and let you speak.

Insufferable. Absolutely insufferable. Yeah. I mean, look, we keep having the same conversation with people, don't we? You know, and it's that's not to say that it's true of all design agencies, but we keep running into problems where a design agency has designed a website that at first glance looks very slick, looks very modern, looks very flashy. Um, and then when you dig a little bit beneath the surface, it turns out that it's not really functional. It's not doing the job of the website, which, you know, yes. Looking impressive. Like, like you say is sort of part of that. But it's also got to communicate. It's got to help somebody who lands on that website, contextualise the business, work out whether or not it's what they're looking for, whether or not they want to enquire, that sort of thing. And these websites, you know, we find time and time again, they're just sort of wholly inadequate at that bit.

Keep talking Mike. You know, hopefully you'll say something interesting at some point.

Yes. Very good. But no. Yeah. So I mean, and I think the the problem is, like you say, it's not a problem with designers. It's a problem with a design is the only thing that matters approach really, isn't it? It's a problem with kind of going out to make something that fundamentally is designed to look pretty, rather than something that is designed to function as a website. Yeah.

Even more maybe not just designed to look pretty. It could be designed to look outstanding. It could be a thing of beauty. Yeah. But the chances are, if you go down that route of using a design agency to do your website, as opposed to a digital agency or a digital marketing agency, an agency that does design as part of a bigger exercise, i.e. creating a website that actually adds some value to your business, then you're going to come unstuck. You could argue that if you went to and there are agencies like this, if you went to a marketing agency and because they know about marketing, they take charge of and run your web project, then the chances are your website will also be a bit rubbish, but for different reasons. Yeah, it will be potentially technically a bit rubbish, especially if they outsource the design and build to a low cost economy. Yes, he said diplomatically.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the yeah, I think it's important as well on the design piece to remember that, I don't know, I guess fundamentally the problem, so far as I see it, is that design is of secondary importance, I suppose. I mean, some of the ugliest websites in the world are the most functional, right? Like Amazon, for example, no website converts as many people as Amazon, but it looks pretty rubbish really, on the surface of things.

At least you didn't say that ten minutes ago when I was ordering you some books.

Yeah, but it works. It's fantastic. It's a brilliant website, but it looks ropey as hell. I mean, it's it's all grey and. Well, yeah, a little bit. It's very uninspiring.

I bet they spend a fortune on making sure their website does its job effectively.

But that's exactly my point, right? It doesn't look super flashy. It doesn't have to. It just has to do its job well, which is connecting people to the goods that they want to buy. And that's, you know, it has a lot of design. A lot of money is spent on its design, but that design is for a purpose and it is for the purpose of making people buy things quickly. And ultimately, I think that's the bit that's missing with a lot of websites. I mean, you know, I'm thinking about one of the clients in question that we've had this conversation with recently. And fundamentally, you know, the website looks nice and a lot of time and effort was spent on making elements that look nice, but don't do anything to communicate what the client actually does or what their unique proposition is, or why you should contact them. It's just sort of empty window dressing.

But how does it how do we finish up in these situations where we have conversations with customers, new customers, usually when we're in rescue mode, who've spent sometimes a lot of money to arrive at a position where they have a website that looks nice, presentable looks, I don't know. Yeah, looks, looks like looks, looks great, but absolutely doesn't do what they wanted it to do, which is maybe, you know, generate business and help them grow their organisation.

I like to be blunt, my point of view on this is that it's as much the customer's fault as anybody else's, because I think people go out to buy a website and their first thought is, I want a website that looks good. I want it to reflect well on my business. And they've missed the piece where the important thing is actually that it does its job well. I mean, we've had a lot of these conversations where people have actually said, oh, now I've done that. I realise it's not working. But until, you know, they've, they've paid their money for the new website and it's not converting anybody. They don't realise that that was the bit that they really wanted it to do all along. Right. So it's sort of a, a retroactive realisation. Oh, actually this doesn't really work. But when they were going out to, to ask agencies to tender or whatever they did, that probably wasn't even a part of it. Right? They probably weren't even saying, oh, you know, make us a, a high converting or make us a really effective website. They say makes a really nice website, makes a really modern one.

Okay. So. How, you know, our podcast, our show is, is, is for people. It's not for agency people. It's for people who are business owners, um, chief marketing officers, marketing execs, people trying to help the organisations they work for market more effectively and specifically do their digital do more effective digital marketing. So how do they figure out whether the agencies, they're talking to prospective agencies that they're having conversations with about a website redevelopment or a, a new website development? How, what can we how can we help people understand the difference between an agency like us? And there are plenty of great agencies like us. It's not just about. This isn't about promoting red evolution, but agencies who are specialists in creating websites that not only look fantastic but perform an essential role within the business.

I think you can tell very quickly based on the language that agencies use.

Um, French. Portuguese.

Yeah, as long as they speak Romanian.

Romanian.

Okay. No, but I mean, in all seriousness, I mean, what I was just saying about customers is wholly true. The other aspect and angle to this is that there are a lot of a lot of agencies out there who think that flashy, impressive design stuff.

Is just stop there, right? Just be careful. Right. But if you look to your left, somebody walking around this room taking photographs and videos. And who is that?

That's Leslie.

Who's Leslie.

You pay her. She's your employee.

Okay. Right. Carry on with the dribble.

I mean, you. You make it so hard. No, but in all seriousness. Look, you know.

Matron.

There are. If an agency is. If you go to an agency and you say, make me a really cool looking website, and they don't push back on that. If they start talking to you about how to make things that look, you know, kind of modern and cutting edge and interesting, and they're not talking about things like what your customer's expectations are, what the website needs to do, what your audience wants. How are you going to make somebody convert on the page if their language is all about design and appearance and imagery? That's a major red flag. Because, you know, there are times when people come to us and they say, make me a really flashy website, and I'm thinking about one client in particular here on reflection.

Slow down. Alex. Galloping there. Slow down. Relax. Just because Leslie's filming you doesn't mean you have to start behaving like a performing chimpanzee. Just relax.

Performing chimpanzee. It's my natural state. Um, no. I'm thinking about one client in particular. They came to us and said, make us a flashy website. And on reflection, that was like one hundred percent the right thing to do for their audience. Car tuning website.

Okay.

Yeah. It fits. It's like, this is actually what their audience wants to see. And in order to persuade people that they're credible, an element of flashy design is essential, but often.

A technical term.

That is the technical term. Um, often when people come to us and they say, oh, I want my website to look really cutting edge or really modern. The first thing we will do is push back on that and say, well, why? What is it you're trying to achieve? And I think if you're talking to an agency and they're not saying that sort of thing.

You've started speeding up again.

That's how you probably know that they're not on the. They're not on the level that they're not going to do what you need them to do.

Mhm. Okay. So mighty also be the case that a design agency who are trying to win a piece of work, uh, to build a website or redevelop a website might produce design work before they've even been commissioned. They might actually say, look at these fantastic designs, because I guess that's their stock in trade, isn't it? They could look at an existing website, spend a day or two creating some mocks of what it could look like, and that would be quite seductive, I would imagine, to some business owners, to some marketing managers, etc..

Because I think the first thing when you see a really impressive rendering of what your potential website could be is, oh, I really want that. And it's not informed by anything, is it? I mean, I think this is the this is essentially what we're saying, isn't it? We keep having conversations with people who have been not in a negative way, but they've been bought in by those flashy designs and not realised until after the fact that that's not actually going to give them what they need.

Yeah. Well, I think it's probably true to say, would you not agree that a website that looks okay, but has been built well to attract potential customers and convert potential customers into into actual customers, is going to add way more value to a business, broadly speaking, than a website that simply looks great.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the other thing too.

There's no reason you can't have both. I hasten to add.

But also the end goal of a fantastic looking website that performs well. You can only get there, I think iteratively. You can't just say from the word go, we're going to design the best looking and most functional website ever, and we're going to do it just with the knowledge that's already in our heads. There's an there's an element of, of agencies, I think, deliberately pulling the wool over people's eyes here, because to get to the point where you have a fantastic website that looks beautiful and functions very well, you have to go through like stages of testing, you have to try things, you have to improve things gradually, right? We very rarely do we build a website, sign off on it and say, there you go. It's perfect. There's always an element of kind of continual refinement. And I think the idea of building a website that looks pretty and then trying to add all the things in it needs to work well is sort of backwards. You know, you start with the bare bones, you start with the website that works and then you make it prettier over time. I mean, to me, that seems like the most sensible approach, and I am a little bit suspicious of anybody that says, oh, you know, you can have a website that works and looks beautiful and you can have it all in three months time, because that's just not a real. That's not a thing really, is it?

Yeah. So what you're really speaking about there is continual design growth driven design. Yeah. It's called lots of different things. But the, the approach when using growth driven design is to get something which you would normally refer to as M, V, p minimal viable product, live as soon as possible. So you can start building on that foundation testing, etc.. Um, there's no reason an m, v p website shouldn't look fantastic though, right from the get go, is there?

No, it's just it's just not going to look like the shiny, like the websites we keep encountering that look very slick and polished, I think. Well, maybe, I don't know. Do you think it can look that good and function?

Ask that question again.

The websites that we keep encountering that look very slick and polished, do you think that is a thing that you can do while taking that kind of growth driven design approach?

Uh, yes. And another example of how you can do that is if, for example, with one of the new customers that we've got, um, down in the central belt of Scotland, um, because most people listen to this podcast are in the States, so they're not quite sure of the layout of Scotland Shire.

It's so it's a convoluted and confusing place, isn't it?

Yeah. I was once asked many moons ago, um, in the early days of my internet career by someone in America, if Scotland was physically attached to England, or was it a separate.

Island, free floating.

Or a separate island? Yeah, yeah. But you know, my geography, my knowledge of the US, my geography, geographical knowledge of the US isn't isn't that good? I was looking at the map the other day, just going off on a tangent here, a.

Complete.

Tangent. I was looking at the map because I was trying to understand where different places were like, okay, California there and you know, Nevada there and just trying to sort of piece together, I think I was trying to find out. I was trying to figure out where Albuquerque was because I'm watching Better Call Saul at the moment and really enjoying it. Um, sorry, what was I talking about? Remind me.

Growth driven design. Minimum viable product.

Yeah. So, okay, so like the new customer that we've got down in the central belt, their website not keen on the messaging. Um, but broadly speaking, the layout is actually not bad. It's, it's quite nice, I think with better imagery, better use of video, better messaging. There's a framework there. So they're sort of m v p, which somebody else developed for them. And we're now going to take it over and sort it out and do everything else is actually all right.

It's all right. But it wasn't developed as a minimum viable product. We haven't paid the price you'd expect to pay for that.

No, no that's right, I think I don't know. I don't know what he paid for it. But it's it's certainly needing a lot of work doing to it.

Yeah.

To make it into what he needs it to be. So it was very much a design led exercise. And you know, when, when we, when we met, uh, Julie and I met him last week, you know, that came across quite strongly that he, he'd been taken on a design led, led exercise by the agency he worked with. And that's that's that's not his fault. It's not his mistake. He thought he was working with a company who understood how to create the website, that his business is blossoming and growing business needed. And they weren't. It was dishonest on their part.

Yeah.

Just the same as if somebody came to us and said, like, you know, I've got five hundred thousand pounds to spend on a rebranding exercise. You know, we would just put hand on heart and say, we're not your guys, you know, go and speak to, I don't know, true agency in London or go and speak to made brave down in Glasgow. These guys are just knocking it out the park. It's exactly what they do. We're not the right guys for that. I think in an ever more competitive market, I think there are design companies out there who are absolute wannabe web companies, but they really, other than learning how to use a CMS content management system like WordPress or craft or something else other than having a, having a sort of high level knowledge of that, they really don't have the skill set to build websites that are going to finish up being a valuable asset for the business, in my opinion.

I think part of it is, and I was saying to you earlier, when we were in the car, that one of the things that I think is really difficult is that our agency is full of people who think they know lots don't actually know anything. And it's not a dig, it's not a I'm not attacking anybody.

You know what that sounded like when you said that? You said it sounded like you said, our agency is full of people that don't know Dick, And yeah, Leslie's even nodding her head. She agrees. You've just told the world that we're. We're a bunch of useless buggers.

Know our industry.

Or really not.

Please. Our industry is full of people that think they know everything and don't realise how much they don't know. And it's not a dig at clients. And it's not really a dig at these agencies. I think the problem is they just oversimplify the problem in their head. You know, these design agencies, hand on heart, think they're doing a good job of designing websites because it looks kind of pretty. And people who don't know anything about web design look at it and think, oh, that looks nice. But they've missed the bit where design has to have intent and it has to achieve something. And you know, the images on the client's website you're talking about are the perfect example, right? So everybody knows it's a sort of tried and tested truism that if you have images of people on your website, people will generally be more likely to trust you. They'll be more likely to engage with the content. The human brain likes seeing human faces. Lo and behold, this very pretty website doesn't the about Us page notwithstanding, have a single image of a human being on it? It's just a big no from a basic kind of fundamentals of design standpoint, but they don't even know that there's a rule book that they're missing. Do you know what I mean? It's just sort of like they think, oh, well, it looks pretty, so who cares? And I think that's the problem really. We just exist in an industry where the barrier of entry barrier to entry is so low that you get all of these people out there who think they can have a crack at designing a website and then, you know, when it doesn't work, they're like, oh, well, it's probably the business's fault, not ours.

Mhm. And, and I guess tools like Squarespace and Wix and HubSpot with their kind of pick a template, drag drop, bish bash, bosh.

Anyone can do it.

You can, you can build what is ostensibly a great looking website, um, that somebody else designed for millions of other people to use, but still, if not, you know, it still looks the part. Um, I don't know, I don't know, it's, it's frustrating. And I think I think it's one of those situations where the design agencies who are having a bash at building websites, simply, they don't know what they don't know.

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's really interesting. It reminds me of this weird craze that happened when I was about sixteen. I was in sixth form college. And, you know, the group of friends that I was friends with.

Last.

Year, that was nearly fifteen years. Well, it was more than fifteen years ago. I don't want to talk about that. Um, anyway, big craze, sixth form college. Everybody decided they could download this piece of software called Fruity Loops. I think it was music sampling software. And you could just plug your, your guitar into your computer and you could record stuff and you could put effects on it. And suddenly everybody in our group of friends thought they were like a recording and mixing engineer. And one of my friends was studying, um, like mixing design. And I remember him getting really angry, like really angry at the fact that everyone thought they could do this. And I remember thinking to start with, oh, what a pretentious idiot. Of course everyone can have a go at it and only kind of with age and experience, you realise, no, he's one hundred percent right. It brings the entire industry down when everybody thinks they can sort of have a bash, and you do get all these awful problems where people have invested, you know, fifteen twenty K in a website and then found actually it doesn't perform at all now. And it is just because these people think they can have a go. I don't really know how you stop that really.

But no, I guess there are agencies out there who, and probably quite a lot of agencies out there who started out life as designers of business cards and brochures and, um, what else? What else would they have done, you know, anyway, printed media, printed media. I know predominantly.

I know of an agency that started as a catalogue design agency, and they are the, the key example of an agency that does this sort of thing where they just sort of have a go at designing something and then kind of blame it on the client when it doesn't work. Yeah, yeah.

Uh, so what are we what are we trying to say? How how do we help people listening to this to take something of use from this conversation.

When you go out? Well, what I would say is, and you may disagree with me, as you so often do when you go out, I don't. Oh yes you do. When you go out to have a website designed. Remember that design is not about making something pretty. And if you are talking to somebody who is or seems primarily fixated with making your website look good rather than function well, that is a giant red flag.

But you see, the thing, the thing that bothers me about that is, well, I'm going to ask the question, are we really still there?

Yeah, I think we are.

Sadly, the evidence of our own eyes suggests that we are. And I just don't understand how.

No. Well, I think this is part of the problem. Again, when we were talking before, I was saying, you don't you don't realise how much kind of specialist knowledge you have working in an industry until you sort of take a step outside. And the sad thing is, I think not not in a sad way, as in a judgmental way, just unfortunate in that we haven't got there yet, is that a lot of people still just don't realise that there's a lot to this stuff. They think, oh, I have to have a good looking website. My website has to look good. It has to make me look professional. And they don't realise that actually that's not what their websites for at all.

Well, yeah, I mean, I guess it should be a given. I mean, sometimes when I'm speaking to, to, to potential customers, I, I'll, you know, encourage them to speak to other agencies. Um, because I know for a fact that a lot of other agencies will not be covering off the subjects that we're covering off when we're doing, when we're having discovery calls and initial conversations rather, you know, as opposed to discovery calls. Um, but one thing I do say, if you, if you, if you choose to work with a credible agency, you will finish up with a good looking website. The difference is if you, if you choose the right agency, you will have not only a good looking website, but a website that is helping you find new customers and grow your business. Yeah. Um, but going back to this idea of, you know, design or going back to this idea that there are still people out there who are focused on design, um, and just ignore all the other important aspects, including some of the technical stuff, which they get horribly wrong as well. If I think back to probably a time before your voice had broken and there was an advert going around from IBM and there was something about the advert and they were talking about, you know, somebody was getting wildly excited about building this website with a spinning logo. And what IBM was saying is like, yeah, fine, but what does it actually do? Is it helping you sell more stuff? Is it, is it, is it managing your stock inventory so that your clients can, you know, see what what's available, you know, whatever it was, you know. So this idea of like, you know, a website being, you know, something, as long as you've got a spinning logo, you've got a great website. I just can't believe that we're still there.

It's a perennial problem. I mean, when I'm thinking about, you know, relationships with clients that we, you know, even where we've, we've done the education piece, we'll still run into things where people will come to us and say, oh, okay, I want to redesign this page and I want it to look really good, or I want it to have this image on it. And they're like, primary initial concern is the, the look and feel of it, which again, you know, that comes after all the other stuff, all the wireframing and storyboarding and the working out what it's going to do, they just kind of skip straight to the make it pretty bit. And that's clients that we've, you know, been working with for years and you think would be well past that. But I think it's just one of those things where if you don't and again, it's not a criticism of anybody on the outside looking in because I don't think you can unless you live and breathe this stuff, really kind of appreciate what what it really takes to make a web page work. And I think I think we're going to always be kind of talking about this to people really, aren't we, and trying to educate them.

Yeah. And there is a danger, I suppose, that this, um, people listening to this might misconstrue, they might come to the conclusion that we're saying that branding doesn't matter, that precision doesn't matter, that pixel perfect websites and design doesn't matter. We are absolutely not saying that.

It has to look stunning, but that's not the primary concern. That's a sort of secondary or.

Tertiary and is a given, you know, it's more or less a given.

Well, it's not and this is the other fundamental thing. Like it's not hard to make a web page look pretty. I mean, we, we have fantastic design resource in-house, but like even kind of, okay, designers can, can go away and look at other people's websites and work out how to lay things out in a way that looks visually appealing. That's just not particularly difficult. I don't think I think the real challenge is making it, you know, functional and good looking. And that's the bit that takes a lot of time for sure.

Um, one of the things that we find when we pick up websites, uh, to rescue, if you like to, to convert into a valuable asset, it's a snore getting quite heavy. Now, one of the things that, you know is a telltale sign for us is when the website has been built, let's say it's been built with WordPress, which is a, you know, very common system. We would never we would never choose to build a site from scratch in WordPress. But, you know, lots of people do. It's still probably the most popular CMS out there. And we've certainly manage and look after plenty of websites that were built with that, that we've sorted out. Um, but they use tools like WP bakery, Elementor, various other things. Now these tools are great. They're fine, but they bring with them some technical, um, what am I going to say? Some technical Get some bloat. Yeah, that is not necessary in order to create the visual. The resulting web pages. It's the. And when we find websites that have used tools like Elementor, that tells us that the website almost always tells us that the website has not been particularly well put together because these tools create drag and drop environments. And like I say, fantastic. Lots of people use them and they've got maybe their part to play, but.

Well, I mean, are they fantastic? They're not.

They're fantastic because they give the tools to marketers, uh, to produce, um, content to help grow websites, etc.. So, you know, so the tools that help people, you know, you can do exactly the same without using Elementor. And that's our preference. But I understand why people do use them because it puts the communication tools in the hands of the communicators and takes the geeks out of the loop, but there is a price to pay for that.

That's the problem, isn't it? You're trying to take a shortcut where you shouldn't, and that's ultimately going to come back to bite you. I mean, I think this is the I'm trying to think of a good analogy where you can just sort of do something.

Make it about cars. We haven't done a car in this podcast.

Desperately trying to, but I mean, well, I don't know. Is it the same? Yeah, I suppose it is the same really as like, there's something wrong with your car. And instead of taking it to a mechanic, you take it to, I don't know your mate who's pretty good with cars sometimes, and he does something that resembles a fix and it might run for a little bit longer, but it hasn't actually tackled the underlying issue. I mean, that's that's how I think of Elementor and WP bakery and those kind of things. They'll get you where you want to go, but they're taking you by a route that you shouldn't take. Really, in the long run, that is going to come back to bite you. And if you're thinking, you know, how can I get this beautiful design that a designer has done for me on the page? I can't do it. Therefore, I'll use a drag and drop interface. Well, that's, you know, the key is that you couldn't do it. Go and find somebody who can do it because they may well add more value than just sort of realising that design using software that is ultimately going to handicap your website.

Okay. Okay. So we've been on a bit of a journey there. We started out with the premise that you should not trust a design agency with.

A website, even keeled impartial premise. Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. Um, you should definitely trust designers with the design of your website, but they should be working. I'm going to fit this word in. They should be working in concert. Ooh. Like that, don't you? They should be working in concert with, um, people whose skill set is around lead gen search engine optimisation, conversion rate optimisation content, i.e. storytelling, etc..

Yeah, definitely. I joked earlier in that in a meeting that we kept our designers on a short leash, and I meant it, you know, in the best way possible. It's not a dig at designers. It's just ultimately, if you let a designer loose, they will make something that is very pretty and not very functional. Mhm. Um, I can see Deanna furiously kind of gnashing their teeth at me.

Well, you know, you make a good point because Diana's been with us now for a number of years, um, based out of our San Diego office. No she's not. She just works in San Diego. We haven't actually got an office in San Diego, but her husband works for Amazon out there. And, uh, so she lives out there. Um, and it works well. Now, Diana's been with us for a long time, but she would be the first to admit, I'm sure, um, that when she joined us with a very strong design background, very, very good design background, um, great track record, great portfolio. The learning curve for creating fantastic websites was quite steep. Um, thankfully, you know, she worked closely with Rob, who again has a design background but is now way more involved in development and some of the more technical aspects than than design. Although he still does a fantastic job of the design work that he does tackle. Um, so we've done the hard yards, if you like, in that we've helped somebody who is a designer, creative, very creative person or not just someone people in the team who are creative, fundamentally primarily creative people kind of understand where their work fits in with the bigger picture. It's like what they do isn't the end game.

Yeah, absolutely. And even now, when you know Dan is designing a home page, often me and her will sit down and have a chat and I'll put like a wireframe together. And I'm like, these are the things we want to be on the page. And that is a collaborative thing. She's not kind of designing in a vacuum. And I think that's a really important point. You know, it's ultimately like a website is a team effort and it is multidisciplinary. You cannot just have sort of one area of expertise. Otherwise you will end up with something that is fundamentally one dimensional. It's going to do one thing well.

That's right. That's right. Okay. Um, anything else we need to cover on this? Trusting a design agency with a web project. All I would say is the reason we've recorded this is because we have two new clients at the moment who've both come to us because their websites were underperforming. They weren't helping them with business growth, they weren't getting found in search, etc.. And the the primary reason for that was they had been created by creative people without the strategic, um, approach. That is absolutely necessary in order to create a website, um, in this day and age that, um, that delivers.

Well, yeah, to the point where one of them, you know, they'd actually scraped out a load of really good content because it didn't fit with the design and were then wondering why it didn't rank in search. Yeah. I think that is the, the sort of pinnacle of that in action, isn't it? It's just handicapping performance.

That's right. Okay. So if you've been listening to this and you think to yourself, these two guys are just full of it and I want to go on. I want to go on and set them straight, then get in touch with us.

I would love it if a designer reached out to set us straight. That would be really well.

But the thing is, there are now designers who are right across the the whole growth driven design piece. They are very talented, creative people, but they understand where their abilities and skill set fit in to the to the, the bigger picture. So they're out there. They're absolutely out there. We're fortunate that we've got people like that within our team. And but equally, there also seem to be design agencies out there who are reluctant to transition into being proper digital agencies and are just whacking together pretty looking websites that really serve no purpose.

Do you know just just a final finishing thought. Another way that you can probably tell in advance whether or not you're talking to an agency like that is the portfolio. So agencies that just showcase pretty websites, instead of talking about the growth that their designs have driven or the results that their websites have gathered are like another major red flag because you're not designing something just to look pretty. Like you say, that's a given. But like, does it perform? Does it do its job?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Okay. Um, like I was trying to say before Alex rudely interrupted me, uh, if you want to come on from the, uh, Digital Marketing From The Coalface, you can go to red evolution dot com and fill in a form, um, and let us know who you are or pick up the phone, send us an email, send us a WhatsApp, send us a messenger message.

If you do come on this podcast, you'll have to put up with his relentless bullying. You do. It's a given.

Anyway, you go make me a cup of tea and, uh, thanks for listening.