How to Outsource Web Design

Did you know, 50% of consumers believe that website design is crucial to a business’s overall brand. (Top Design Firms, 2021)?  Website design encompasses everything from your landing page layout, to the layout on product pages, colours of CTA buttons and much more. With so much riding on the professional design of your website, is it better to hire in-house or can outsourcing yield equally as advantageous results? In this blog, we're going to talk about how to outsource web design successfully no matter the size of your business.

Why is professional web design so important?

We touched on what web design includes, but why is it is so important? Well firstly, because in a lot of cases, it's the first impression a customer will get of your business. Wherever you're investing into paid advertising to generate traffic, or working on your on-page SEO and back-linking, you'll be attracting organic traffic which will be forming their opinion of your brand on the first page they visit. If it's full of unprofessional imagery and looks generally messy, it's a fantastic opportunity to convert wasted.

Another reason professional web design is important is that it helps your audience to understand your brand better.  An experienced designer will know how to place design elements together in a way that harmonises and improves the way the page communicates, taking into account design principles like visual hierarchy and the contrast of text against backgrounds. Those small points might not seem like they will make a big difference, but added up they will have a significant effect on the journey your customer takes when they land on your page.

What options for outsourcing web design are there?

Maybe you're a small business owner looking to launch your new site,  a marketing executive looking to boost conversion rates and slash bounce rates on the website, or even an agency owner looking to give your client base more services through your agency - whatever your situation is, how can you get started with outsourcing web design? Let's first have a look at the traditional options available...

Freelancers

Working with freelance designers gives you the flexibility to choose professionals whose work you know you love, and offers some benefits when it comes to communication with the individual working on your project. For those that have smaller projects such as a few landing page redesigns, it can be quite quick to source a freelancer that can help. However if you're looking for a medium to higher workload, for example if you're looking for help with a large amount of client work, it can be difficult to work round one professionals calendar and so you'll need to work with a few different freelancers to get the volume you need. Communication between freelancers can be more difficult to achieve, and you're overall design might not be as smooth as it should be.

Website Design Agency

Website design agencies are a great choice for those looking for start to finish help, if you need help with brainstorming what you want the style and direction of your website to be as well as if you need your website to be developed. Lot's of web design agencies will offer SEO services too, so you can really hand over the complete process of designing and building your site. For the completely new brand, this is a common choice but one that comes with a slightly heftier price tag.

Unlimited graphic design subscription

Design Cloud offers a newer way to outsource web design for one low monthly fee. We're an unlimited graphic design subscription service based in Manchester, and all are designers are hired in-house and based here in the UK. We've kept outsourcing graphic design to a professional graphic designer and accessing daily design support as simple as possible, just pay one flat rate monthly fee and submit as many tickets as you like through our tailor-made dashboard. There's no scary contracts to bother with and you'll be able to scale up the volume of design work almost instantly by simply adding more designers to your existing plan. For agencies looking to work on client web design projects, this works particularly well for catering to demand in those busier periods and saving budget when things are slightly quieter.On our Pro Plan, you can subscribe and work with a dedicated Design Cloud designer every business day on full front end web design. Your designer will work through the top task in your design queue every business day, and they'll be able to help you with all your landing page designs. It's worth noting, we aren't a web development agency, so we can't help you code and build your site but we are well-experienced in creating designs that will be ready to send to your web developer.When you sign up for the plan, you'll also be able to access help with a whole host of other daily graphic design tasks for no additional fees including social media designs, presentation designs or ad designs. Read here for more information on how a Design Cloud subscription plan works. 

Setting checkpoints for projects

Another way to ensure the success of your web design project is to make sure that you have set proper checkpoints so that you know your project is on track to meet deadlines. Submitting tickets through Design Cloud lets you do this easily as you will need to submit the project task by task for your designer, giving each task a deadline you'll be heading for. Your designer will work through one ticket every business day, so they'll always be sure to let you know if there will be any issue in meeting your deadline. When you set out a project in this way, you can make sure that each smaller task is being efficiently worked through so that client deadlines or your own deadlines are met.

Keep it consistent

No matter how you choose to outsource web design, creating a consistent design is one of the most important things that needs to be achieved. Websites with inconsistent design across multiple pages can make for a very confusing customer journey, which in turn will negatively impact your brand identity. Whilst working with the same designer or set of designers on a project is a very straightforward way to maintain consistency, you should also consider future-proofing your strategy by making sure you have everything any designer would need to create a new page way into your brands future too.Having a design system basically ensures that every element on your web design is carefully planned out, down to the padding left between your FAQ box and it's title. Your Design Cloud designer can lay out your web design in a design system, meaning you'll have everything you need to continue improving and building your website way into the future. When your designer builds your design system, you essentially are left with design blocks that can be mixed and matched into the future without ever being even slightly inconsistent.You'll also want to make sure that whoever you outsource to has a good understanding of your brand, and knows your brand guidelines well including different logos for various size constraints, colours, fonts and imagery styles. So before outsourcing any design work, make sure that you have a good understanding of your brand and a strong set of brand guidelines to help speed up efficient communication.  For more inspiration on what you'll need to include in those guidelines, have a look at this checklist of assets every business needs for a strong brand identity. For more information on how to outsource web design with Design Cloud, book your free 20 minute demo with a service expert here.