13/04/2010
2010 – What a start
Why work with a digital agency?
Life’s gone digital. We do business online, buy clothing and electronics online, share photos and comments and tweet people all over the world from the comfort of our own homes. According to the Computer Industry Almanac, there will be 1.83bn people on the internet this year. We spend an average of 13 hours a week online, 17% of that time is spent on social network- and blogging sites. Last year, UK consumers spent £38bn online, and this is expected to grow as payment methods become easier and more secure.
So what does this mean for you and your business?
The simple fact is digital is too big to be ignored. “But we already have an internet strategy”, you may argue. You have a website? You send emails to your clients about special offers? You even write your own blog? Impressive… for 2004 that is.
It’s true that many people have basic knowledge of html coding, can put up a website and do some designs using a garage copy of Photoshop but that’s not going to get you very far in the digital world, not anymore. In fact, the online universe has become so complex that there are now specialised disciplines that focus on areas which just a few years ago could be addressed by one or two techies. Web design, web development, web application design and development, search engine optimisation, email marketing, content management systems, pay-per-click advertising and a host of other vital functions are as technically distinct as the individual components of the internal combustion engine. If one part doesn’t work well, the others will suffer and the entire machine will lack performance.
What performance are we talking about? Return on investment. View your website and online activities as investments and look for ways to earn a profit from them. The better the individual elements perform their functions, the higher your financial return.
If you have a huge internal IT department with specialists from each of these fields and they’re twiddling their thumbs waiting for something to do then great! Use them to get the cash flowing. If you don’t, then now’s the time to start thinking about seeking the services of a digital agency. The benefits to you are numerous.
Professional digital agencies have dedicated programmers, developers, designers and researchers that work with online on a daily basis. You therefore don’t have to go through the lengthy and expensive process of recruiting new employees and can rather capitalise on the skills and experience of people in the know.
But how do you choose an agency? What is involved in working with the agency? How do you know if you’re paying too much, or that a project is taking too long to complete? These are difficult questions to answer if you’ve never worked with an agency before. That’s why we’ve decided to compile this seven-part series of tutorials on how to work with a digital agency. It will be based on our experience working with our clients and what is important to them. This is to help make your decision of whether or not to work with an agency easier and also how to work with them once a project is underway.
The first step in working with an agency is choosing the right one for your needs. This is what we will be looking at in our next article.
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