Which is better? An agency or a freelancer? Maybe there’s a better option.

If you want to overhaul your website and you want to do it right, I’m going to assume you know better than to try and do it yourself. The question then becomes who should you hire?

A typical web design or redesign project often involves the the following:

• A review of your brand, brand values and attributes

• Your corporate identity (or visual brand)

• Photography, copywriting and probably a re-think of your messaging

So that leaves you with a couple of options for your web project:

Option one, hire a web design agency

If your budget is north of 20k you should be able to find one who can do all of the things on the above list. It’s important to know you will be one of their smaller projects, and your project will be one of many.

You may not always get responses quickly and they may be from a project manager who is overseeing many projects. You may not have direct access to people doing the actual work.

This is not necessarily bad, and in no way means that outcomes won’t be good or great. It just means your transparency into the process will me limited.

Option two, hire a freelancer or freelancers

If you go with a freelancer, it’s unlikely you will usually have to find a person who does one, or maybe two things on the list.

For example, you might need to hire a brand strategist or a designer who does both branding/CI and website design as well as a copywriter and a photographer.

You will need to coordinate all of these service providers and make sure that the thread from your branding and messaging stays consistent all the way through to the photographer to the copywriter and finally the web designer.

Each of these freelancers may have their own way of doing things and might alter the original work you did with the other service providers to fit their style/view of the world.

They may all use different tools, methods or processes to gather their information.

What I’m saying is, important aspects of the project might get lost in translation.

But how about Option three: A multi-talent with an excellent network

Working with someone who is knowledgeable about all aspects of your project, can even do many of them herself, and the things she can’t do has a trusted network of partners to work with.

You only work with her, and she manages the entire process (which you don’t need to be bothered with)

Obviously I’m talking about myself here!

When your project is a little too small for an agency (or you don’t want to be at the bottom of the project priority list) but the idea of coordinating a bunch of freelancers sounds like a nightmare, this is a great solution.

I regularly do the following for my clients: Set their brand direction, then source and coordinate a photographer and photoshoot based on the brand work we do together.

I also source and work with a hand selected group of copywriters that I’ve vetted myself. I’ve done this for clients in Germany (I have a good network of creative freelancers in Germany), but I’ve also done it for clients as far flung as Singapore and Madison, Wisconsin.

On some projects, I’ll even do the branding, copywriting and website design myself. Where that’s not possible I can pull together the right team.

This service relieves the client of having to manage and coordinate a project (one that they’ve likely never done before) while at the same time giving them direct access to the people doing the work and one person overseeing the entirety of the web design process.

Does this sound good to you? Get in touch to see if working together makes sense!