When you create a new website for your luxury real estate business or redesign an existing one, the question arises of how to pick a luxury real estate website design agency that can help you with this task and deliver outstanding results. Please don’t neglect the importance of this step because a hastily made decision can result in extra costs in the future when it turns out that the website has errors, no optimization for mobile devices, or poor UX/UI design. While the safest way to go about it is to choose partners from top design studios, if it is not an option in your particular case, we’ve worked out several tips that can help find you a development company that suits your budget, business goals, and quality standards.
Clearly define your goals
Before setting off to look for web development companies to partner with, it is essential to have clearly defined business goals for the future website in front of you. Think of your luxury real estate website as a tool that does specific things for your business, for example, lead generation, increasing brand awareness, attracting customers, and showcasing your property. Also, consider what functionality your website would require according to its business goals: multi-page navigation, search-engine-optimized content, SSL certification and HTTPS protocol support, and so on.
Review their portfolio
You can be sure to a greater degree that the luxury real estate web design firm you choose will do an excellent job on your project if they already have expertise in developing websites for luxury real estate. However, cross-industrial expertise never hurts — if a web design team has done fantastic work for clients in various fields, they will likely come up with suitable solutions for your particular business challenges. When reviewing a portfolio, pay attention to the sizes of their clients, whether the studio prefers to work with large corporations (and big budgets) or is keener to partner with small-scale businesses since it can highly influence their work approach and development process. Try figuring out if they authored all parts of the listed projects in-house without approaching freelancers. The agency must have all required resources for your project on staff as it would speed up project development and guarantee you will arrive at a successful result without extra expenditures and loss of precious time. There’s nothing wrong with working with freelancers, but if they do mission-critical tasks on your project, the risks of late delivery and going over budget may rise.
Check online feedback
Another step in evaluating possible candidates for your website development is reading online feedback and reaching out directly to their previous clients, if possible. Online reviews on such sites as Clutch or Trustpilot are helpful when you need to gauge how satisfied clients are with their websites, the quality of customer support, and how they tackle complicated issues. Also, even reviews on such platforms as Google, Facebook, and Yelp can be taken into consideration to get a clearer picture of a web design company.
Look for accolades
One of the important ways to acquire industry recognition is through awards and contests, which reward the best in the community. Most professional luxury real estate web design firms constantly apply their works to reputable web design awards and strive to have their name among their nominees and winners. Among the essential web design awards that everyone should know, we can point out Awwwards, which relies on a jury of industry professionals; CSS Design Awards, which ensures that studios, freelancers, and agencies all have a chance of recognition regardless of the size of their business; as well as TheFWA — an international design awards platform that has been around since the 2000s. Such accolades are reliable markers that a studio has the expertise and provides quality that meets the standards of an international web design community.
Summing things up
In the beginning, it might be challenging to choose a luxury real estate web design company. Start by contacting those you know, talk with companies that have experience using their services to learn more, and don’t forget to check online reviews. After selecting a few candidates, set up initial meetings with them, during which you can present a clear concept of your website and learn what each company offers.
