How to Choose a UI/UX Design Agency

When looking for a design agency, you have to take many things into account. Let’s take a bird's eye view over the agencies’ landscape to facilitate the choice.

Imagine that you are choosing raspberries on a market

Would you examine one stand of every fruit seller at a time?
Or would you review all available stands before taking a decision?
You’d probably do the former, just because the sequential method is more convenient.

People look for a good web designagency in a similar manner

When looking for web designer, our potential clients rarely know what a certain agency offers. They are examining agencies one by one, like raspberries on a market.

But behavioral sciences indicate that a strategy we use has a real impact on the quality of our decisions — we are 22% more likely to choose the best option when considering all variants together rather than one at a time.

And if in the case with raspberries a wrong choice will cost you a rotten mood at most, the design contractor can make the difference between your business's success and failure.

Okay, how to choose a web design agency effectively?

To better understand what web design partners you need and when it is helpful to view them using a 2-dimensional framework with the following axes:

  • The expertise dimension
  • The responsibility dimension

To better understand what web design partners you need and when it is helpful to view them using a 2-dimensional framework with the following axes:

The dimension of expertise

When hiring a web design company, you are paying for its expertise. And since the design landscape is extremely diverse, it is crucial to choose the expertise that is the most relevant to your case.

On the dimension of expertise, we have design contractor types lined up depending on the project scope they can handle, from the widest to the narrowest:

  • Full-service agencies

  • Industry-specific agencies

  • Specialist agencies

  • Specialist industry-specific agencies

  • In-house designers

  • Freelancers

Full-service design agencies

Full-service agencies are jacks of all trades. They can cope with all design aspects of a business, from UI/UX to branding, digital marketing, and web design. So once you find a web design agency that knows many things, you can put the matter of design hires to rest.

Sounds good, but there is one problem with expertise: The more you spread it, the thinner it is.

That was Gerald Weinberg’s Law of raspberry jam. It says:

That was Gerald Weinberg’s Law of raspberry jam. It says:

“Experts can be most effective when working in a single area. Their ability to show stellar results, however, diminishes when they grow their sphere of influence.”

Full-service design agencies are useful when you need a whole complex of design services. Yet you may not get the best design talent and the most personalized approach. So if you can narrow your project scope down, it makes sense to look for agency partners that offer a thicker layer of expertise in the area that fits your case.

Specialist agencies

If you need specific design services, like graphic design, or product design, it makes sense to look for design agency types that are strong in that particular area.

Specialty agencies usually provide one of the following services or a combo of them:

UI/UX design

Can define how your web or mobile app looks and feels.

Branding design

Can help you with a logo and distinctive visual identity.

Website design

Craft websites. May also offer web development and website copy.

Graphic design

Can make you pitch deck prezzies, infographics, and social media visuals.

Industry-specific agencies

Design that works well for, say, eCommerce, definitely won’t work well for online education. Likewise, fintech companies have an entirely different set of needs than CRM businesses do.

Design that works well for, say, eCommerce, definitely won’t work well for online education. Likewise, fintech companies have an entirely different set of needs than CRM businesses do.

eCommerce

Know all Amazons’ UI patterns by heart.

eLearning

Ready to slatter gamification over your learning app.

Fintech

You don't need to explain to them what  AML & KYC mean.

CRM design

Know how to squeeze overly complicated systems Into intuitive apps.

SaaS design

Professionally fight churn rates.

Your industry

You can find an agency that focuses on solving your problems.

Specialist industry-specific agencies

That’s a class of even more specialized agencies that our company belongs to. We at Eleken offer a single service — UI/UX design. And we provide this service for a single industry — SaaS.

Such specialization makes us a suitable choice for a narrow segment of clients only. But those who fall within this category, get the most relevant expertise and processes tailored perfectly to their needs.

Imagine you are a SaaS startup that needs to move fast and solve unique UI/UX challenges. If you reach out to a full-service agency, you’d get:

bad choice  :(

A big unwieldy team,

that apart from designers would include project managers, design architects, and researchers.

A one-size-fits-all working process.

Universal agencies rarely adapt their processes to accommodate the unique needs of each individual project.

Limited experience of UI/UX,

since it’s only a little part of what they offer.

Full-service agencies may work well for big companies from established industries, but not for SaaS startups.

Over the years that Eleken has been cooperating with SaaS, we've developed a working model that works better for them:

good choice :)

A small dynamic team.

We get started with your task instantly and work in iterations, moving step by step.

No universal algorithms.

Iterative workflow allows us to get regular feedback from our clients and users, and respond quickly to changes.

Direct communication.

Our designers communicate directly with our client and their team, so you can think of Eleken as your in-house designers. That’s even reflected in Eleken’s pricing model.

In-house designers

The density of relevant expertise reaches its peak with in-house designers. No agency will ever be able to understand your product’s context so deeply as a designer that has worked with you for years.

But there's a flip side to that coin that enables the dispute between in-house vs agency design.

If the designers’ knowledge is limited to what they have done for a single project, they may lack skills and an outside perspective that are essential for innovations.

Freelance designers

Freelancers vary greatly in terms of their background and experience. They often specialize in specific areas, allowing you to find a designer with the exact skills you need and have lower overhead costs compared to agencies, making their services more budget-friendly for smaller projects.

But there’s one universal struggle of being self-employed. It’s about a lack of community, mentorship, and exchange.

The cumulative expertise of 30 designers that has been cultivated in an agency for years will always be richer than the expertise of a single freelance designer.

Additionally, freelancers might have varying availability, and there’s a risk of them being unavailable when needed or juggling multiple projects simultaneously.

The dimension of responsibility

If you need raspberry jam, you can buy it ready-made in a store. Or you can buy raspberries, and cook jam yourself. You can also growa raspberry bush in your garden, collect berries and make your jam.

how much of the responsibility you are willing to delegate.

Here we have design contractor types arranged from maximum to minimum responsibility they undertake:

If you need raspberry jam, you can buy it ready-made in a store. Or you can buy raspberries, and cook jam yourself. You can also growa raspberry bush in your garden, collect berries and make your jam.

Outsourcing agencies

Hiring an outsourcing agency means buying a jar of jam in a supermarket. This cooperation model assumes that you formulate a project task, and get the result when it’s ready.

The agency takes full responsibility.

You won’t participate in a design process, which is probably a good thing, but you risk buying a pig in a poke.

The only possible way to reduce the chances of buying a pig is to document all the requirements meticulously which is possible for code, but rarely possible for design. Moreover, as a rule of thumb,

the more responsibility you delegate, the more you pay.

To delve into the topic, read our dedicated article on web design agencies’ pricing models.

Classical agencies with a project manager

The agency provides you with designers and a project manager that juggles tasks, deadlines, resources, budgets, and team members. It means you, as a client, get a point of contact, but you don’t run the design process.

“The communicational model of classic agencies would be an optimal choice if you don’t have an in-house employee to manage a design team.”

But you risk ending up in a Chinese whispers game since the communication passes through a middleman.

Dedicated teams without a project manager

That’s the way Eleken works with our clients. If you hire our designers, they join your own team and communicate with you or your project manager directly, with no middleman.

It works great for startups,

for those who are developing a project from scratch and do not know exactly what needs to be done.

We don’t need detailed specifications to start, we don’t even ask clients to collate design requirements into briefs.

Instead, our designers run in-depth interviews trying to get into clients' heads and learn to understand their needs. Afterward, they start designing iteratively. The final result equally depends on designers’ performance and clients’ willingness to collaborate, provide feedback.

Freelance designers

If you need a person to design you a couple of screens, your first thought is about freelancers. It’s hardly possible to find an agency interested in such a tiny project scope.

But as you move from hiring a web design agency to hiring a freelancer, you step onto shaky uncertain ground.

“Would a freelancer respect deadlines or not? Would they be loyal enough? Wouldn’t they just disappear when you need them the most?”

Hiring freelancers, you play Russian roulette. This engagement model makes you responsible for both project management and mitigation of possible risks.

In-house designers

Apart from project management, hiring an internal team means organizational issues and higher ongoing costs for office rents, software licenses, and so on. For a long time, that was considered a price you pay for irreplaceable watercooler team culture and over-the-shoulder design reviews.

However, our recent pandemic experience and a fierce growth of cloud design tools have proved that designing with remote teams is not inferior to sitting under one roof.

Aleksandra, the UI/UX designer at Eleken, summarizes it like this:

“Even if we were sitting in the office next to each other, we’d discuss designs via Zoom instead of staring all together at a single screen.”
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