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12.15.2009 // 31 Comments // Ballard Condo Are web agencies design-heavy?

Comments

1. 001 // Peter // 12.15.2009 // 3:16 PM

   I get the same impression, but I always come to the conclusion that the reason it seems this way (I say seems because I don’t know hwo these agencies really work) is that design is so much sexier.

   How stuff works is really interesting to see and read about to programming geeks, but you make something really attractive, and it has a universal appeal - so it’s easy to really sell somebody based on how the work in your portfolio looks. Selling people on how the stuff works seems like a more difficult proposition.

2. 002 // Kevin Stewart // 12.15.2009 // 3:17 PM

   Well said! For too long, the term developer has been overloaded in the Web agency world. That only leads to mismanaged expectations IMHO.

   FYI, on a recent Boagworld podcast, Clearleft stated that they outsourced (or left to the client) the actual backend development.

3. 003 // Jeff Croft // 12.15.2009 // 3:18 PM

   Peter: I agree that selling clients on how something works probably isn’t the best strategy. I think marketing themselves as a design agency is fine. No qualms with that at all. I’m just trying to get a handle on how these firms handle requests to build apps that can’t be done by front-end developers and CMS wranglers. That’s all. :)

4. 004 // Martin Ringlein // 12.15.2009 // 3:24 PM

   Great write-up (also enjoyed the Twitter conversation as well).

   At nclud, your assumptions are right on. We’ve called ourselves “a creative web design agency” from the very beginning; being honest to the fact that we do not do custom back-end development. We primarily focus on the front-end and our “developers” by title are in fact the CMS-Wrangler’s you describe.

   Your title is interesting, because when we started nclud almost three years ago, we did it because we felt there was a missing focus on “design” among “web agencies”. Web Standards were still all the rage in 2006 and it was CSS and Javascript that was defining “cool”; we wanted to make sure we could be an agency that had a focus on design first and foremost (leaving the custom development to the development shops).

   And, your right about one more thing. Clients are asking for less and less content-oriented sites. We actually hired our first “real” “web developer” (he starts January 4th). Someone to build our own web applications (in Pyhon) as well as native applications for iPhone and Android. We were always afraid of losing a focus on design by offering custom development services; but there is without a doubt an industry shift and we know we have to adapt with that.

   I loved that nclud had a focus, creating “unique, stylish and usable designs for the web”. But we’ve evolved a lot since those early days for us; offering much more strategy and information architecture services as well as now a large focus on custom web application development.

   I will say, we will always be a big proponent of being as efficient as possible, never re-inventing the wheel. That is why we “wrangle” CMS’s whenever and wherever possible, and will continue to do so. We’re happy to see the evolution of CMS solutions like WordPress 2.9 and ExpressionEngine 2.0 evolve so appropriately; continuously making them more and more powerful (an allowing us the ability to further customize them).

   There are a lot of great development shops out there. Many that compliment nclud’s model very well; focusing only on custom development and partnering with design agencies for the visual design and front-end development; I tend to think that is still a great partnership … when both agencies can stay true to their core focus and always keep to that focus.
   

5. 005 // Jeff Croft // 12.15.2009 // 3:26 PM

   Awesome response, Martin. Thanks so much for helping me understand! :)

6. 006 // Kyle Fox // 12.15.2009 // 3:29 PM

   I worked at an agency for about 3 years, and during most of that time I was the only back-end developer. The only way I was able to keep up with internal stuff (our CMS, products) as well as custom client applications was by using Django :)

7. 007 // Dennis // 12.15.2009 // 3:32 PM

   It’s definitely the norm to have it one way or the other. Very rarely will I see a shop with an even lineup. I’m working at a shop now that’s dev sided for the first time in my career and I find a lot of things are very different. In some ways bad and in some ways it’s good. I think the key is talent and people who can see beyond their own circle of awareness.

8. 008 // Jameson Huckaba // 12.15.2009 // 3:36 PM

   Jeff, I’d agree that there are certainly more front end people at agencies than development people, and probably because the number of people familiar with html/css/js far outnumber those proficient with backend technologies.

   The fact still remains that just because I happen to be familiar with the front end doesn’t make me a designer. Just like a GOOD musician, designers have talent in addition to skill, where I may just have skill alone.

   It’s a bit of a paradox, as one very good designer can piece together the look and feel of a website on their own, while coding is much more modular, and bigger projects are better-handled by more people - so why is the ratio of designers to developers so off?

   For one, development is arguably a more difficult skill. Personally, I’ve spent far more time acquiring a working knowledge of PHP/MySQL than I have gaining proficiency with html/css/js. Many people in the industry are more interested in the overall scope of the project, or the paycheck, and are new enough where they either don’t have the formal background in development or they don’t have the time or ability to be self-taught.

   My rough guess is that the industry will ultimately correct this imbalance, as it has already started to - just look at the average pay for a mid-level developer versus that of a mid-level front end guy.

9. 009 // Keith Casey // 12.15.2009 // 3:39 PM

   I’d take it so far as to say that any shop that calls themselves “an agency” is probably light on the development side, even to the point of doing none of their own development. Generally, most don’t even have a single developer on staff. Not criticism, just fact.

   As a PHP developer that started dabbling with Drupal in 2004, I’ve noticed this for the past couple years and worked to position myself accordingly. In fact, that’s how we tend to operate. We work with good agencies that understand the medium but don’t have the time/ability to build a development group.

10. 010 // Martin Ringlein // 12.15.2009 // 3:40 PM

    Just curious …

    Have any big applications (ie: Flickr, or Basecamp, or Gmail) been developed by “web agencies”; does that model even work? I am probably going to get flooded with responses that make me look naive. But the three examples used were all done by people excluded from the article, internal teams.

    Most large web applications (that are any good) on the scale of a Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or Basecamp are typically not developed by third-party agencies.

    I am just way off base?

11. 011 // Jeff Croft // 12.15.2009 // 3:46 PM

    The fact still remains that just because I happen to be familiar with the front end doesn’t make me a designer.

    Very true, and I’m sorry if I implied otherwise. Perhaps the title should be “Are web agencies front-end heavy?”, because that’s really what I meant. :)

    For one, development is arguably a more difficult skill.

    I think you’d get a lot of argument to that one. :) I don’t consider either to be more difficult. They’re both challenging, and they’re both absolutely necessary.

    I’d take it so far as to say that any shop that calls themselves “an agency” is probably light on the development side, even to the point of doing none of their own development. Generally, most don’t even have a single developer on staff. Not criticism, just fact.

    Probably true, and makes sense. The word “agency” definitely comes from the advertising world, which has not historically employed programmers (although they’re probably starting to).

    We work with good agencies that understand the medium but don’t have the time/ability to build a development group.

    I suspect this is often the case, and it makes sense. Seems like a great model. I guess I’m surprised agencies don’t tend to tout their development partnerships on their websites. Maybe that’s intentional, though.

12. 012 // ryan // 12.15.2009 // 3:52 PM

    Interesting post. In my experience of working at agencies and startups, what you’re describing is accurate.

    I guess the corollary questions are:

    • Are the clients of web agencies development-heavy? Some clients have the expertise to program but not to design a great experience. It’s never been their core-strength. It probably should be, but that’s a different post.
    • Is the industry developing in a way similar to film production - where bits and pieces of the product are produced by company specializing in Y or B, but not A to Z? ILM works on the effects for films. Visual design or vision might be held by the director, etc?
    • How does this kind of de-centralized structure affect the final build? When different craftsmen are working on the product at different times, and the product is the important thing that’s built - how does an agency ensure a quality product?
    • If a client truly wants to build a web-app, why don’t they have these resources in their own organization? This is the most important question that I’d have for those clients that want to build apps.
    • Does this vary for different products? For web-based products, it seems that engineering and design can be done by different companies. For agencies that focus on iphone apps, that seems synthetic - where development and design are housed under one house. Take a look at BottleRocket (http://www.bottlerocketapps.com/) for example.

13. 013 // Jeff Croft // 12.15.2009 // 3:56 PM

    Most large web applications (that are any good) on the scale of a Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or Basecamp are typically not developed by third-party agencies. I am just way off base?

    You’re certainly right about those three, and perhaps they were bad examples because of it. But, I’m pretty sure apps like these are definitely developed by agencies all the time. Perhaps a better example is tTipped, which we did at Blue Flavor (http://www.blueflavor.com/our-work/tipped/ — Garret Murray did the development way back then). Or Clockwork, which we also did there (http://www.blueflavor.com/our-work/playbook-formerly-clockwork/ — in this case, the client handled the development themselves). Or Dreamdone, a goal-management app we were asked to build (I did it in Django), but hasn’t yet launched. So it’s not so much about scale, but about functionality. You couldn’t have really built Tipped, Clockwork, or Dreamdone with an off-the-shelf CMS.

14. 014 // Jeff Croft // 12.15.2009 // 4:01 PM

    Great questions, Ryan!

    Are the clients of web agencies development-heavy? Some clients have the expertise to program but not to design a great experience.

    In my experience, there is definitely a fair amount of this. That is, clients who have built, or are building, an app and need someone to design it for them.

    How does this kind of de-centralized structure affect the final build? When different craftsmen are working on the product at different times, and the product is the important thing that’s built - how does an agency ensure a quality product?

    In my experience, it affects the quality a great deal. I’m sure it can be done well, but the times I’ve worked that way, it hasn’t turned out well.

    If a client truly wants to build a web-app, why don’t they have these resources in their own organization? This is the most important question that I’d have for those clients that want to build apps.

    Very good point. But I can tell you that there definitely are people coming to agencies and freelancers looking for web apps to be developed, because them come to me on a regular basis. But you’re right — this question ought to be asked.

15. 015 // Natalie Downe // 12.15.2009 // 4:32 PM

    Hi Jeff,

    Interesting topic. Jut thought I should clarify a little about Clearleft, as was pointed out in a comment earlier, Clearleft deliberately do not do serverside development for clients as a general rule, although several of us can put together code for our own projects if we need to.

    We have specialized as a UX/Design/front-end web agency and work very closely with the team beat suited to develop the back-end of the project, this often is the in house developers already in place with the client but we also have a number of trusted development partner companies, it depends on what is best for the project and the client.

    Personally I don’t consider myself a visual designer, I come from a computer science background at university and can do serverside development but I find HTML/CSS/JS more fun :)

    There definately are challenges with a distributed project development team which can be managed, however I think this is a slightly different issue from whether the web agency has serverside development capabilities in house. All good discussion topics though :)
    
    

16. 016 // Ben Bodien // 12.15.2009 // 4:39 PM

    Superb discussion material - I love reading about how other agencies work as so many are loathe to discuss such things. There should be more sharing like this!

    I’m half of a tiny agency at Neutron Creations (and come to think of it, we’ve technically worked together since we’re now involved with front-end work on Authentic Jobs - hello!). We think of ourselves as a web development company, and we’ve struggled a bit on how to pitch ourselves. We were going to go with “studio” because that implies a small scale outfit who are focused on one task, but it’s also very design oriented. So we went with agency because it’s not too distant from studio, but it seems that it can mean what you want it to mean. A bit of a cop-out but there you go.

    When it came to coming up with content for our site, we tried to emphasise our design awareness (I consider myself a designer-developer), and we hired Tim Van Damme to design our site. This may have backfired slightly because judging by the prospects we get through our site contact form, a lot of people are looking for design work from us. Of course that could just be because good design work is becoming more and more appreciated, and there’s a lot of good design work that needs doing. Maybe the development work is harder to find, because that generally comes via design oriented agencies who need to outsource the development side (that’s been the case for several of our client projects).

    It’s taken us a while to find clients who are specifically after development work, and I think it’s a harder market to enter for a fledgling agency than the design market (assuming you know your stuff either way), because as Peter said in the first comment, it’s tough to sell people on development work because it’s just hard to show it off. Especially when the project wasn’t particularly sexy - if the design team didn’t do a great job, it doesn’t matter if the back-end is rock solid and all kinds of perfect, because people have a hard time seeing through the skin.

    I’d like to know from the other “development” agencies out there (who are you, anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a pure dev agency?) how they’ve gone about pitching themselves to the market (content strategy etc for your site), and where they end up sourcing most of their business from (I suspect from design agencies?).

17. 017 // Jeff Croft // 12.15.2009 // 4:51 PM

    Natalie: Thanks for stopping by and clarifying!

    So now my question is: does marketing yourself as a pure US/design/front-end shop work? I presume so, since you guys seem to be doing well. But, do clients come to you assuming you can do the whole package? Or do they already know and understand that you’ll only do the front-end (from what I can tell, the Clearleft website doesn’t speak to this specifically)? Do you ever lose clients to shops that do it all?

    I realize you may not be at liberty to discuss all of this, and that’s fine — but I’m very curious!

18. 018 // Martin Ringlein // 12.15.2009 // 7:05 PM

    Those that “do it all” rarely do it all well; I think that is a pretty well known fact among clients. Most of our clients come to us wanting their visual/front-end design partner to be separate from their development partner.

    It is about having a core-competency, a core-focus. I know many web agencies that call themselves “full service”, and the work just is honestly not impressive — something seems to always get compromised.

    The simple truth is that most of the people participating in this conversation are of a small percent, the five percent. Most people doing work on the web are not doing good work. It is still rare and difficult to find top strategy, IA, design, front-end and back-end development talent … even harder to create an agency compromised of all of those facets, and have them be top talent — expensive too!

    There is nothing wrong with partnering with other agencies or freelancers/contractors when there is a skill-set required that you don’t have on staff or requires a focus you don’t support. Your agency should be valued by the work it does, not necessarily by the team it employs.

    We outsource all things flash (to an amazing shop in DC that we love working with), not because we can’t do it and not because we won’t do it … but because we are confident enough to know there are people who do it better and more efficient than we do. That our time on a project is better spent on other facets and we prefer those facets enough not to grow our team in a direction that differs from our focus, our preference.

    I love working with small teams, I also love working with focused teams; small focuses on core-competencies.

19. 019 // Jeff L // 12.15.2009 // 7:05 PM

    Certainly an interesting question. I work at an agency in New Hampshire (http://www.pixelmedia.com/), and we specialize in being a “full service” agency. We can take a project end-to-end, including everything from the initial concept, wireframing, user research, visual design, html code, and back end code.

    We also have the ability to partner with clients who have already done the design, and we simply program their app, or with clients who have an in house team but are looking for a partner with experience to help them design something functional, usable, and great looking.

    I think the biggest difference however, is that we’re an agency of 50 people, and most of the agencies you mentioned in your post are much smaller than that, with a much more targeted skillset.

    Do your assumptions change if you start looking at larger agencies?

20. 020 // Fred Boyle // 12.15.2009 // 8:40 PM

    I think in the end what really matters isn’t where things are done, in-house or not, it’s more about the total experience.

    Design encompasses not just the visuals but everything else involved in the experience. It becomes more an issue of managing expectations and the project as a whole - defining the gatekeeper of the experience and not just handing something off.

    Just handing off visuals to a dev team, or code to the visual team, doesn’t usually work out best. All disciplines should work hand in hand so that the end goal stays the same - a great experience. As long as all the players are working towards the goal of delivering the best web solution possible, whether content or app centric, where the various bits come from won’t really matter.

    This makes for a more holistic approach to web solutions, where every discipline has a voice in order to deliver the best experience possible.

    If agencies stay vested in the project as a whole and not just their component of it, the experience as a whole gets better. With all the specialties involved and cooperating from beginning to end everybody wins.

21. 021 // Andrew Fox // 12.16.2009 // 12:32 AM

    Interesting post!

    At our agency we have approximately half designers and half developers and we do custom work as well as using our own CMS product and a bit of wrangling.

    The agency is part of a group of teams (http://www.dotDigitalGroup.com ) - which are predominantly made up of developers. 1 team for eCommerce, 1 for email marketing and 1 for CMS. We use our own products and also build custom apps for clients too in these areas.

    All these teams including the agency cross over in some places. For example if a client comes to the agency, we’ll design a bespoke site or app (focusing on deign and UX) and it might then be handed over to the ecommerce team or CMS team to help with the development and vice versa for the clients coming through CMS or ecommerce wanting design from the agency.

    This way we have experts in each field.

22. 022 // Justin Lilly // 12.16.2009 // 12:56 AM

    Hey all.

    I currently work for a large web agency in NYC called HUGE, though I’m not officially speaking for them. These are just my impressions & opinions after a year of working there.

    The evolution of the company I work for, went from a design shop which delivered PSDs, to doing front-end development, to now doing full-stack development. I think this is a natural progress for a traditionally design-centered agency.

    This evolution is one reason design-shops tend to be more front-end heavy. I think the current ratio at HUGE is approx 1:2 or 1:3 BE:FE dev. The reality of the situation is that we get a lot more design work than we get development work, so this makes a lot of sense from a resourcing perspective.

    Another reason agencies tend to have more FE engineers is that they’re really fking capable. One of my coworkers, for instance, built a mini PHP web framework so he could write templates easier. That’s hardcore stuff, my friend. My coworkers on the FE side might be what you would call CMS wranglers, but they have the chops to build things from scratch as well.

    I think another point to be made is that design is often a one-time cost, so it doesn’t make tons of sense to have designers on staff. You pay for a design, get a style-guide, and you can operate within that design/guide for the next 2-3 years. For that same company, they’ll need incremental updates to their websites. They’ll need feature X so they can charge client Y $Z per month. This is an ongoing cost and requires a full-time staff. The amount of money they’ll make in a year will offset the price of a developer salary in a very real way. The benefits are not as cut and dry as Dev X built Feature Y and it made us $Z.

    Re: Ryan, I would say that quality often suffers when you have to pass a project off to the client’s internal team, or another external team. I think that’s a lot of the reason why HUGE has brought on a team of developers. They can realize their vision and b/c they control the whole process. Think Vertical Integration.

    Re: Ben Boden, A few examples of really good development-only agencies would be Lincoln Loop and Eldarion.

    Anyway, sorry for the brain dump. Agency work has been on my mind lately I guess.

23. 023 // Damien Tanner // 12.16.2009 // 4:11 AM

    Hey Jeff,

    When we started our Rails shop New Bamboo (http://new-bamboo.co.uk) 4 years ago, we did so with the primary focus to provide only backend development services. There are a lot of full service agencies out there, but we felt this was giving rise to a situation where an agency does it all, but may spread itself to thin. We decided to focus on one thing, and do it well. Instead of providing a one-stop-shop we partner with other specialists who are experts in front-end to deliver the complete solution.

    Being specialists also means we get the opportunity to work on increasingly interesting and complex projects with the clients we take on.

24. 024 // Ben Bodien // 12.16.2009 // 9:38 AM

    @ Damien Tanner

    How do you guys source your business? Where does most of your client work come from? Are you approached a lot directly by clients who are specifically looking for a dev only agency, or do you get more projects via design only agencies who need help with the backend?

25. 025 // David Sutoyo // 12.16.2009 // 10:21 AM

    My impression is that front-end/design people and back-end people tend to aggregate into their own group/agency. So the agencies that us designers are more familiar with are those that are front-end/design focused, formed by designers/front-end people. At my work, we are very back-end heavy with many Rails developers. When they talk about agencies they usually think of Rails shops that have the exact opposite situation that you mentioned. I’ve never heard of these agencies until they mentioned them, but in the Rails world they’re tops.

26. 026 // Stephen Bush // 12.16.2009 // 6:28 PM

    At Medium we consider ourselves an Integrated Design and Development firm. Many of our projects require custom Django development, and our back-end developers outnumber our front-end engineers. I work on the front-end, but one of my favorite things about the agency is the depth of knowledge our developers possess. We also have a design team, and the three departments collaborate to make projects successful.

27. 027 // Richard Rutter // 12.17.2009 // 4:27 AM

    does marketing yourself as a pure UX/design/front-end shop work?

    In a word, yes.

    But, do clients come to you assuming you can do the whole package? Or do they already know and understand that you’ll only do the front-end?

    It’s a mixture. Some clients come to us expecting the whole package, others understand we only do design, and others come to us specifically because we only do design.

    Do you ever lose clients to shops that do it all?

    Rarely, but it happens. However it’s comfortably balanced out by the work we get because clients value our specialism. We can be completely flexible and agnostic regarding server-side development. We don’t care whether we’re working with a client’s internal team, their long standing development company or if we’re partnering with a specialist company ourselves. We’re not tied into Rails, Django, Java or .net. That really appeals to many clients.

    Obviously there are plenty of successful full service agencies out there, and that works for them. Specialising in design and front-end dev is what works for us - it’s what we know, what we’re good at and most especially it’s what we enjoy.

28. 028 // Peter Baumgartner // 12.17.2009 // 7:53 AM

    Hey Jeff, I think you are spot on with your assessment here. At Lincoln Loop (http://lincolnloop.com) , we are the exact opposite of the agencies you describe here. Our shop is development heavy and light on front-end/design. It was a conscious decision on our part that so far has worked out pretty well.

    Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of design agencies with 0 or 1 “developers” on staff contacting us about teaming up for development work. My assumption is the same as yours — clients are wanting sites that are too complex/custom to handle cleanly in off-the-shelf CMSs. We’ve been successful with these sorts of partnerships in the past. It lets people/teams focus on what they are really good at instead of creating an amazing design and dropping the ball when it comes to implementation (or vice-versa).

29. 029 // Dan Croak // 12.19.2009 // 7:01 PM

    thoughtbot is the opposite: 2 designers & 10 developers where “developer” means major contributor to open source Ruby or Javascript projects, published author, conference speaker, etc.

    Clients don’t care what technologies you specialize in as long as you do a great job.

    We used to find that subcontracting caused quality problems so we stopped and focused on being strong in both design & development.

    We believe both are necessary to be a great web agency.

30. 030 // San francisco webdesign // 01.06.2010 // 8:55 AM

    As a graphic web designer , I’m extremely glad to find that another individual brought up this topic.

    Many people out there just don’t grasp the concept of what all is needed in our field, and I think also we are all too often underrated or taken for granted. Never the less I’m very glad to see that you feel the same way I do , thanks so much for this post!

31. 031 // Openedneptoto // 03.03.2010 // 8:56 PM

    I just discovered SatelliteTV on my PC! Ultra cheap at only $50 once off to get the software and an account on the Internet. I get more channels(in HD I might ad) than I get on cable so tomorrow I reckon I’m going to cancel my cable subscription. Thought I’d share this with you guys, worth to check out.

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