To be honest, if you want to learn how to choose a WordPress agency correctly, you must first assess your needs.
Your main questions should be: “What kind of website do I need?” “What should people do there?” and “Why is it better than others?”
Remember that an accurate brief is an accurate choice.
Let’s answer the questions above one by one and gradually discover how to choose a WordPress agency that will elevate your business to new heights.
In this article, you will learn:
- How website functionality correlates with the WordPress agency size, skill set, and experience.
- Where to look for responsible vendors.
- What questions to ask and what answers to expect when running discussions with WordPress agency candidates
Let’s get started!
How to choose a WordPress agency: Main steps
As mentioned, selecting a WordPress agency will take several steps:
- Preparing a brief: website purpose, target audience, design, functionality. This will set the criteria for selecting a WordPress web design company: price, size, and experience.
- Selecting the world region to hire an agency: Outsourcing website development to a WordPress Agency in a nearshore destination like Costa Rica may help you save costs and gain access to top tech expertise simultaneously.
- Searching for companies on platforms like Upwork, LinkedIn Clutch, GoodFirms, and GlassDoor.
- Interview the candidates to check if your vision of the product aligns with their capabilities, resources, and expertise.
Each of these steps deserves further elaboration.
Preparing a brief
Complete a brief if you wish to know how to choose a WordPress agency successfully. A good brief will decide things like:
- Size of the WordPress website design company (one person, 2-5 people, more)
- Experience with the WordPress website design firm (newbies, intermediates, or experts)
- Quality of the team (UX/UI designers, custom software developers, data scientists).
In WordPress, features are turned on through plugins, which are available to everyone, including non-techie starters.
Yet, for professional WordPress web development, you need expertise. There can be plug-in conflicts, speed, and performance issues, or you may simply need to develop custom functionality.
Example: Skyscanner, an online travel metasearch service, utilizes a custom complex machine learning algorithm that analyzes historical data on ticket prices, flight load, and weather conditions to predict ticket prices and availability. To develop functionality like that, a WordPress web design company needs to have experienced data scientists and AI developers on staff. Yet, you don’t need such experts if you try to start a blogging website.
Therefore, to know about a WordPress agency to hire, one should outline the vision of the future product.
The following table should help with orientation in the WordPress feature set:
| Simple feature | Advanced features | Complex features |
| Search | Payment gateway | Custom AI tools |
| Log in/Sign-in | Product catalogs | Text-to-speech |
| Registration form | Admin panel | Data-driven analytics |
| Weather | AI Chatbot | Image recognition |
| Photo Gallery | Shopping cart | |
| User profile | Sorting algorithms | |
| Push notifications | Recommendations |
Besides features, you must think about the brand voice of your website and decide on the need for a custom design.
Custom design offers many advantages, from brand recognition to site speed and user satisfaction. For example, the 5e development and design team specializes in technologies like React js., which allows them to create superfast and highly functional websites.
To learn more about how to create superfast websites with WordPress, read our article: >>> Headless WordPress: Explanation, Examples, Benefits.
As you decide on the feature set and website complexity, you can move on to selecting the budget.
How to choose a WordPress agency with the proper rates?
WordPress website design companies vary in size, rates, and expertise, as do project demands. Therefore, it is important not to hire the best agency but the best-fitting one.
Once you have decided on project complexity and functionality, you will have a better idea of the type of WordPress website design agency to hire.
Besides the expertise, the project’s price depends greatly on the location of the WordPress web design agency.
Most web design and development companies in the United States charge from $100 to $200 per hour. In the UK, WordPress website design services are in the same price range. Services offering custom solutions charge $300 per hour and more.
Alternatively, you may try to find a WordPress agency in one of the world’s recognized tech hubs. In Costa Rica, the rates of tech companies are lower. For example, most local companies charge from $50 to $100 per hour. Regarding expertise or language and time zone barriers, the country offers major benefits compared to other outsourcing destinations. According to Coursera, Costa Rican developers have strong or exceptionally strong skills in different IT specializations and show some of the highest average results in TOEFL tests in the Americas (average score 92). Additionally, the country is in the same time zone as many US business regions, meaning no huge time-zone gaps.
So, if you are not sure how to choose a WordPress agency in terms of cost-to-quality ratio, outsourcing may be your best option.
Interested in outsourcing web development to Costa Rica?
Contact 5e to discuss your benefits and opportunities. Our company has solid experience providing WordPress web design services to customers worldwide. You’ll have a chance to discuss your project’s specifications in a one-on-one call with our specialist. Book a meeting now!
Where to find the right WordPress agency?
Once you have decided to hire a WordPress web design company in your region, go to trusted platforms to get company lists, rates, reviews, or referrals.
There are several ways to find the right WordPress agency online. Including:
- Go to job platforms:
When asking how to choose a WordPress agency, Upwork will probably be the first search destination advised.
Websites like Upwork aggregate hundreds of service providers (Upwork currently has 14 million users in 180 countries), ready to cater to various business needs worldwide.
Following the model of Hayden Brown, the Upwork CEO, platforms like Upwork focus on the needs of Fortune 500 companies. This means Upwork and the others have become a place for businesses from small to enterprise.
| Platform | What it offers |
| Upwork | Upwork is the biggest player in the game. It features payment protection, enhanced reporting, a time-tracking app, and other advanced features. |
| Freelancer | Freelancer has 50 million users and 20 million projects. Employers can post job contests and select the best agencies. They have a bidding mechanism. |
| Guru | The platform allows free job posting and has a Safe-Pay feature providing payment security. It also charges a 2.9% handling fee for payment transactions. It offers Master of Service and Statement of Work agreements for clients. |
| Hubstaff Talent | The company is free to hire businesses and service providers. It enables invoicing and payroll options via PayPal, Bitwage, and Payoneer. |
- Go to review directories:
There are numerous platforms that aggregate company information and reviews. There you can find lists, rates, locations and advice on how to choose a WordPress agency.
| Platform | What it offers |
| Clutch | The platform has 34,882 firms in the list, and provides information on hourly rates, minimum project size, team specialization, reviews, and referrals. |
| Indeed | It is a job seek platform that also allows checking company reviews and post job offers |
| GoodFirms | The site lists 28172 companies in web development and provides company descriptions, expertise, size, experience, and location. |
| CrowdReviews | A community-driven platform that helps you find companies by the type of software you need, like service software, IT infrastructure software, or industry software. Altogether, they have over 600 categories from which to select. |
| G2.com | The platform allows you to find companies for the type of software, type of services, or purpose of the software. |
| UpCity | The platform offers reviews of 50 K+ companies in different countries and allows the search by type of services (web development, AI development) |
- Go to social media.
WordPress development agencies have company profiles on social media websites, where they offer their services and share reviews and success stories.
| Platform | What it offers |
| LinkedIn has a sophisticated company search algorithm, allowing you to find just the right WordPress web design agency and also giving you full overview of the company’s history. | |
| X (Twitter) | X threads is a great place to get an idea of the future vendor and get referrals. |
| Every reputable WordPress website design firm has a professional Facebook profile to post news about successfully delivered services and expertise. | |
| Reddit is a platform for expertise sharing, and it has strong tech communities where people can seek expert advice. |
You may also try googling WordPress development companies in the world region you select.
As you finish searching and shortlisting companies, it’s time to conduct interviews. It’s important to ensure that the selected vendors are dedicated to your project’s success.
How to choose a WordPress agency: Questions to ask
There are well-known red flags signaling that your WordPress agency won’t push it to the limits to make your project successful. For example:
- They don’t consider user experience. If a WordPress website design company doesn’t place special stress on the usability of their website and doesn’t follow the best UX/UI practices, your platform may end up with high bounce rates.
- Overburden with functionality. Too many WordPress plugins hinder site speed and performance. A good WordPress agency will advise against too many features and help you focus on the main ones.
- Marketing needs not taken into consideration. A professional WordPress website design firm will consider your future marketing needs and craft a website accordingly.
- Platform not scalable: The market changes every day, and it happens that you need to react quickly to the evolving demand. So, if you want to know how to choose a WordPress agency correctly, discuss how they ensure the scalability of the future website.
- No post-release support: As your business evolves, you’ll need to add new features, and your WordPress agency should provide you with the needed support on demand. Discuss what collaboration models they have in place to ensure ongoing support.
Summing up
So, here’s how to choose a WordPress agency: do your homework to know what to ask for, select a country where you will look for a company, check their ratings and reviews on dedicated platforms, review their social media, and run interviews to make sure your needs are attended to with due diligence.
Want to hire a WordPress agency to perform your tasks with attention to your needs and dedication to your success?
Contact 5e for a consultation on your business idea and advice on how to implement it in real life. With 10+ years of experience on the market, we shall help you develop a fast and highly-performing website within your budget and timeframe. Book your call now!
| Keywords | KD | KV | |
| How to choose a WordPress agency? | 12 | low | n/a |
| wordpress agency | 5 | hard | 100 |
| wordpress web design agency | 1 | low | 720 |
| custom wordpress website development | low | 590 | |
| wordpress website design company | 1 | low | 720 |
| enterprise wordpress agency | medium | 100 | |
| best wordpress agency
|
n/a | 100 | |
| custom wordpress agency | n/a | 100 | |
| Best wordpress agencies in costa Rica | n/a | n/a | |
| WordPress costa rica | n/a | 100 | |
| custom WordPress development | |||
| WordPress web design company | 1 | ||
| WordPress website design agency | 1 | ||
| WordPress web design agency | 1 | ||
| web design company WordPress | |||
| WordPress website design firm | 2 | ||
| WordPress website design services | 1 | ||
| WordPress web design services | |||
| WordPress development companies |
Question:
How to choose a WordPress agency?