How to choose a digital agency

First, let's start with a general advice:

• Check the reputation. A serious web and mobile development company owns a portfolio of implemented projects.
• Check the way they work. A digital agency may have an onsite developer team or outsource resources for some projects.

Check the way they’re going to handle your project. An agency may look for specific scope definitions to make the particular job done or be experienced enough to help you bring your project to life from concept to the successful product.

Now these all are pretty obvious recommendations, and it will be no surprise if you find posts telling the same truth on the Internet. However, most people usually solve this problem much more simply: they just ask their friends and colleagues for advice. And if they have worked with digital agencies, they will share their very own and unique experience, which matters more than a general advice.

If you do not have such friends, we’re going to unveil you a few under-the-hood peculiarities you may want to pay attention to when choosing digital agencies.

Focus on technologies

In our fast-paced world it is often very critical to keep an eye after the latest technologies in order to bring the safest and most effective products possible. However, not every web and mobile development firms follows that idea and often prefers to take of use technologies they've been working for a long period of time.

Also, some technologies are offered as open source, meaning using them does not cost a penny to a digital agency (and thus to a client). Turning to such agencies is a good idea if you have a tight budget.

Here at RubyGarage we use exclusively open source technologies and keep an eye on every update, since the more updated is the software, the safer and more reliable it is. We are aware of many different frameworks, programming languages, applications servers and so on. Check out our portfolio to see the technologies we used for each project.

Study client cases if possible

As we mentioned previously, it is great to know if the agency is ready to be reliable for the whole project strategy, not just for its one-time implementation. However, you will often find only the simplest client cases on the Internet like ‹I had a problem, I turned to agency X, they’ve solved it, I am satisfied»›.

However, what happens if the client is not satisfied? What happens if the client comes with a half raw product that should be finished or even revised? Is the digital agency you’re looking at is flexible enough to get such project done as well? If yes, that’s a great guarantee that you can stay safe even if something will go not as you had expected.

At RubyGarage we often meet clients that had unfortunate experience with another digital agency or outsource companies. They come with some work already done and our goal here is to, let's put it this way, revive the product, bring it back to life and make it effective and profitable. That's a pretty usual case. Also, we are partnering with a few agencies from the US and Europe that share their clients with us in case they are not ready to take the specific project for some reasons.

Check out their blogs!

Usually the blog is a great place to find under-the-hood details of how a digital agency works. Great companies usually share useful ideas with their clients, uncover interesting details on projects they are currently working on, publish important news proving their reputation and credibility and so on.

However, note that absence of the blog should not be a reason to refuse from that digital agency. Usually that only means that the agency doesn't have a person that can invest enough time into writing interesting posts.

We operate this blog to help you understand what are the best practices for startups to bring their ideas to life, how online products are developed, and who are the people behind RubyGarage. Subscribe to our blog to know more about the latest techniques in building online products and services!

Now, armed with the advices, you will definitely find the digital agency that perfectly fits your requirements. Good luck!

Originally published at rubygarage.org/blog

Sviatoslav Andrushko is a content manager at RubyGarage. Sviat adores writing about web development, web design, testing, and other IT-related topics.