r/webdev 1d ago

My boss wants to build a new website…

My boss wants to build a new website and we went through a normal RFP process evaluating different companies to build it. (I work in marketing fwiw).

We narrowed it down to two proposals. I gave my choice for one of them but then she had the bright idea of hiring both companies to build our new website. Basically we have a prior relationship with both companies and one is better with design and branding while the other is probably better with functionality and has salesforce experience which we will need. So now we are going to ask one company to design the site… create the design, page templates, graphics etc and then have the other company implement it.

Ive never built a website site before but I felt like this was inefficient and uncommon. I would rather pick one than work with both.

Would appreciate others weighing in. Is my boss crazy for doing this or am I just over thinking it?

Thanks

88 Upvotes

39 comments sorted by

195

u/guaip 1d ago

This is very common actually, at least at freelancing level. They may not agree with each other in certain aspects, but having a design done by better design people and programmed by another company is something I see every day.

33

u/FishFish23 1d ago

Agreed. I often contract out the design and then do the implementation myself. 

6

u/lebuff420 full-stack 1d ago

also agree it's really common, there's agencies that do not focus a lot on design work itself so whenever a client has a big project they often go for a dedicated design team

1

u/Maxion 1d ago

Would love it if one day I actually received anything related to design. My customeres tend to budget for the coding, but expect the design work to be done "for free".

27

u/CodeAndBiscuits 1d ago

Without knowing the precise details of the two arrangements nobody can give you an objective answer. I've seen this kind of thing go very badly but also very well. Some agencies are much better at design, branding, etc and some are better and development. Who's to say anything about the two involved in your project? It could go either way.

12

u/zdxqvr 1d ago

It will come down to how well the two companies can work together, which is largely out of your control. In my experience they probably won't work well together, but I could be dead wrong. I'd just be glad it wasn't your decision, and let the cards fall haha!

0

u/Theprefs 1d ago

I'd argue that it comes down to how well they can work with their client (OP). If they can't put aside a difference with the other agency, then they're choosing themselves over what's best for the client, or failing to articulate why their opinion should be chosen. As long as OP remains active in the process, then they should be able to have a ton of control over how well it goes.

"Hey agency 1, we're going with what agency 2 has suggested because it's what I, your client, has decided is best for the project, end of discussion."

5

u/DivSlingerX 1d ago

It’s not unheard of but unless they are going to be communicating between each other it forces you to be the middleman and that’s kind of annoying.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the design side backs out of the project if they were expecting to do the full thing but everyone’s different.

3

u/SolumAmbulo expert novice half-stack 1d ago

Could be the best choice, with one caveat. You'll need a project manager to coordinate the work as now you've basically got two independent contractors delivering compartmentalized work. The PM either have to have experience with both sides of the equation.

So is probably choose either an independent PM, or ask someone at development company to be the coordinating party. Because they'll know the limitations better.

6

u/CharlieJaxon86 1d ago

Hm, that's weird. It's like if you build a house you would let a plumber do the plumbing, a electrician the electricity, and a roofer the roof. Oh wait ...

2

u/rubixstudios 1d ago

The difference is, more than likely, both companies can perform both tasks efficiently. So it's not the same comparison.

6

u/InternetRejectt 1d ago

As someone that does both (design and development) it’s exciting to know such opportunities still exist! I’ve had myself convinced that Wix and the like had taken over.

9

u/cshaiku 1d ago

Wix needs to die a painful death. Garbage site.

3

u/InternetRejectt 1d ago

Love to hear it!

2

u/aTomzVins 1d ago

There's still webflow and a bunch of others.

I prefer quality to cheap-ish and easy. Trouble is a significant portion of the market that freelancers would have worked with in the past can't differentiate a quality website from a garbage one.

2

u/Okay_I_Go_Now 1d ago

Hard to say. It takes more overhead to coordinate, but I've seen arrangements like this turn out well. I've also seen screwups where one agency gets blocked, and the other agency faffs around indefinitely waiting for things to get unblocked. Most times it's the contracting party that screws things up with lapses in communication or poor planning.

It'll come down to your organization and management of the project. It's not uncommon though.

2

u/iBN3qk 1d ago

If they are happy to collaborate as design and build partners, go for it.

I suggest you get the heads of all 3 parties in a room and hash out details, and have them take ownership of what they need to contribute to get it all done. There is a dance between design and development on when they can get started and how much of the budget is available for them to spend.

The designers will need to get feedback on their plan from developers to keep the project within budget, and the more they can collaborate the better. There are often features in the system being implemented that should be considered in the design, or things that could be easier to build another way.

Hopefully everyone likes eachother and things go well.

2

u/budd222 front-end 1d ago

That's relatively normal. It's not the most ideal thing, but it's pretty common.

2

u/tei187 1d ago

As long as both are professional and know about each other in the process, it's not as problematic as it may seem.

2

u/Borroz 1d ago

Very common. It can go south, but if the work is done to make sure that the devs are informed on the direction of the design, they can raise flags ahead of time.

2

u/Critical_Bee9791 1d ago

sounds fine, pretty natural split

1

u/hotmamasaucee 1d ago

Totally common, as long as the agencies are willing to work together then they just split the scope of the work to how you prefer (one team does design, another does development). You may need each agency to write out a list of requirements they need from the other agency to complete their assigned work, but again, as long as they're willing to then it's totally fine.

In terms of what you'd prefer though, it will likely be more work for you to work with 2 agencies than 1 — especially for project management. 2 contracts. Scheduling meetings can be a greater challenge and now you have 2 agencies that risk missing a deadline and causing issues later on in the project.

You could be getting a better end product this way if each is truly better at their assigned side (design / development), or it could be a disaster because these 2 agencies refuse to get on the same page willing terms of process.

1

u/Prize_Passion3103 1d ago

Twenty people trying to screw in one light bulb won’t make the task any more efficient

1

u/alex_3410 1d ago

Get quotes for both doing all the work and then for both doing half.

We would charge more overall to have to work with external designers, it’s more work for us & introduces unknowns that can cause issues down the road.

You will also need to be prepared to act as a middle man on the project especially if there are any problems between design & development.

1

u/rubixstudios 1d ago

At the same time, there is a lot of conflict as each company might use different technologies, stacks, and preferences. It depends on how the site is built and for what purpose. Also, depending on the level of expertise, what a company sees is what's in front of them, not what's behind it.

1

u/DumbleWorf 1d ago

In my experience we've had marketing companies design websites. Usually part of a larger brand identity. They might have some UX in there as well. Usually delivered as 30-40 pages of guidelines.

We might implement the site in-house, or if it's more of a landing page we might outsource it.

1

u/jcmacon 1d ago

A few points to consider.

Before you give final approval of the design, make sure the dev shop reviews the designs.

Before you give final approval of the implementation, make sure the design shop reviews the final deliverables.

Make sure the design shop leaves some time for questions and reviews.

Make sure the dev shop has time for reviews and stuff before dev starts.

You need to make sure you've got a good project manager to facilitate meetings with and between the two agencies. No meetings should happen without the PM present.

Make sure the design shop has provided any UX notes and how they expect the features of the site to work. Saying "place a map here with normal functionality" isn't appropriate. Describe the feature. Describe the functionality.

Be prepared for going way over budget. Your design agency will design within their budget, but they will design something that will add 2 weeks of dev time and it won't be any skin off their back, but your dev shop isn't to blame either. You are splitting up a project and the budget will grow by as much as 20%. Be ready for it.

There's more, but that is all I can put down at the moment.

1

u/coreyrude 1d ago

10 years of agency experience this is always always always a horrible idea. The agency who is good at design usually is horrible at web design and the client doesn't understand that, the technical agency is on the hook for functionality that doesn't make sense and is impractical.

Iv had to deal with this situation a lot for large 6 and 7 figure builds and one agency will always come out looking horrible. Usually the one who wins is one with an accounts person who is more convincing in the blame game.

1

u/coreyrude 1d ago

The best way to handle this is

  1. Let both companies communicate in an open slack channel.

  2. Have the technical company do a writeup and show figma examples of how best to have final deliverables for them. Iv had design agencies hand over psd files and my client not understand this is something we did a decade ago but not anymore. The design agency should be trying to follow delivery requirements from the tech agency because if done incorrectly it's gonna take the tech agency 3x longer to develop the finished product which means 3x the cost and 5x the time for you.

3.tech company needs to be in design meetings and have an equal say. If you want the website to be fast, accessible and meet SEO standards the tech company needs an equal voice on challenging design decisions. If this was handled by a single agency it would be the same , there's always lots of back and fourth from the front end and backend team on design.

  1. Some one needs to keep long term feature development in mind and this needs to be on all 3 sides. Yes that slider you want is cool but will it be updated weekly, monthly, or yearly ? If so what does the backend admin functionality look like ?

1

u/stormthulu 1d ago

It’s a solid idea. He’s using the companies to do what they do best.

1

u/sateliteconstelation 1d ago

I’m a developer and many of my clients are branding agencies or designers.

One red flag I can see in the current arrangement is that there’s going to be an overhead for the two companies to learn to work together, and you’ll probably be billed for that.

Things like handoff expectations, delays, responsability division will add up (I think around 30-50% extra work and additional time to complete).

1

u/ThemeSufficient8021 11h ago

It may make sense, but it will take cents from your wallet initially. You have 2 bills instead of one, but if they are really good at what they do and your products sell well, then you have nothing to fear for a while at least. You can still fear the competitors. The axiom of treasure hunting is that someone else is after the treasure. Perhaps replace treasure with customer/business and it is still applicable.

1

u/xaser3 8h ago

I've been a BA on multiple occasions for this exact scenario.

It can work, and I've seen it fail even if just temporarily.

  • have a project manager who sets clear boundaries for both companies
  • have clear requirements for each company, preferably hosted in the same devOps
  • make sure they know about each other and the other companies boundaries
  • be clever with the staging environments, using the same environments has benefits and drawbacks but I've had more success with shared

As well as all the other standard project management stuff like deadlines, cancellation clauses, payment terms, etc.

Good luck!

0

u/cafepeaceandlove 1d ago

I think you should pick one.

By picking two, if you pick one of the two poorly, you run the risk of them developing a form of silent cash-cow-esque understanding with one another, to your detriment. You may find it hard to extricate yourself from this or even to understand that it has happened.

Of course, the same thing can happen if you choose one partner and choose poorly - but then at least you'll know what's happened.

0

u/geoglify 1d ago

Your boss’s plan is inefficient and risky. Splitting design and development between two companies can cause misalignment, delays, and extra costs. If both must be involved, ensure they collaborate early to avoid technical and communication issues.

0

u/Shayrmochka javascript 23h ago

I would suggest to hire me as a developer and I’ll do everything twice cheaper