FAQ's

Frequently Asked Questions Before Hiring a Digital Agency

UI UX FAQ's

What are your areas of focus as a UI/UX and web design agency?

User experience is more than a capability for us either for mobile or web. It’s at the core of everything we do here at UIUX Studios. We started ten years before as a UI/UX design agency focused on mobile apps but quickly expanded our offering to B2B web applications, enterprise software, and emerging technologies such as AR/VR and wearables. The UX projects we take on range from building a new product to redesigning an existing app or legacy business software. We do everything you might need to bring a successful digital product to life: user (UX) research, product strategy, branding, user interface, and user experience design, usability testing, prototyping, and development.

It’s no surprise that our web design clients are often the same companies who hired us for UI/UX projects, because who can explain the product better than the people who designed it? We’re a top-rated web design company that believes a great website should efficiently convert visitors to customers while providing a delightful branding experience. Good UX leads to higher conversion rates. That’s why we have UX designers collaborate with web designers on all website projects.

This question asked a lot from our clients. There are many competent UX agencies in India alone and even more globally. It’s hard to be different when the standard is so high.

So how do we stand out? First and foremost, it’s the quality of the work we deliver. We create easy to use, right looking digital products and interfaces which represent your brand in the best way possible. It's our designers who make your project a reality. We always assign a multidisciplinary team of senior designers, developers, UX researchers, and other specialists led by one of our design directors and overseen by a co‑founder.

Finally, unlike most traditional user experience design companies, we combine creativity and product design/development capabilities under one roof and on the same project. Imagine a branding firm meets a UX consultancy — that’s us.

Yes, we not only design but also develop. We’re world‑famous for creating business websites / mobile apps that meet our clients’ goals by merging brand storytelling and award‑winning web design with the latest and greatest web technologies. Our sites convert well, and people share them like crazy, which helps us get new clients who are already huge fans of our work.

For example, the new Teledentix.com website we recently redesigned has seen a blasting 156% spike in conversion. Yes, that’s 2.7 times more. With each new project, we challenge ourselves to try something new, like improving our processes to optimize costs or work faster without losing quality.

Yes, we do. We are a branding agency focused on tech companies, digital products, and direct‑to‑consumer brands. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help you create a visual identity for a health app as we did for HealthGuru. Our capabilities include research, brand strategy, brand positioning, logo design, visual identity, communication design, motion design, and style guide development, among other things.

However, our clients often provide us with either a brand strategy or even a complete visual identity package. In these cases, we use the current brand foundation as a starting point, not just carefully adopting it, but also we’re designing and enrich the brand while staying true to its roots.

Our pricing is directly related to the project scope, timeline, deliverables, and team composition. When the scope isn’t set in project specification, or the project is very dynamic, we prefer engaging on a time and materials basis where you pay us for the time spent. However, most of our engagements are fixed‑price contracts. In this case, we’ll give you a detailed proposal after learning as much as possible about your project. All estimates are calculated based on the hourly rates and the number of hours we think the job will take.

As a UI/UX, a sample project may take ten weeks and cost $50k‑$150k. For time and materials engagements, we would create a custom rate card for you based on the team composition. Our rates span from $20/hour for junior designers to $60/hour for our design directors. We also offer special rates for qualified startups. Please email us to get a quote.

We are an India‑based globally UX design agency; we partner with startups big and small all the time. What can be better than helping founders bring to life ideas the world has never seen before? We enjoy a fast‑moving environment that challenges our skillset and process.

The ultimate achievement for us is seeing our startup clients grow and take over the world. We worked with Uber clone when they were a team of ten and helped design such iconic products as Path and SendGrid.

We have special discounted rates for startups we believe in. Email our CEO, Prince Pal Singh, to learn more.

Yes, we’re up to the challenge. We’re one of the few user experience firms specializing in enterprise UX design and digital transformation of legacy business software. We’ve perfected our process over the years, modernizing digital platforms for Fortune 100 companies such as Teledentix, EasyBioData, and Juniper Networks.

We start each new enterprise UX project with a deep‑dive discovery and research to fully immerse ourselves in the industry and project specifics. Our services span from user research and information architecture, UX design, prototyping, and user testing to full‑stack development and design systems. Our team acts as an independent entity that moves fast, avoiding the bureaucracy of a large organization, often working hand‑in‑hand with innovation labs and in‑house UX teams.

Our lean UI/UX design process is based on the design thinking methodology, which allows us to be flexible, adapting to almost any project type and collaboration model. While each engagement is unique, we always go through the following key phases:

Discovery & Research
We usually start by consolidating all available project documentation and scheduling workshops with your team. During those sessions, we interview key stakeholders, collaborate on requirements, as well as ideate, and plan the next steps. When possible, we’d want to talk to your current or potential customers to understand their needs and pain points. In some cases, we may need to audit your existing product to identify opportunities for improvements. We will also review competitor products, gather design references, and document best practices.

Strategy & Concepts
Based on the discovery & research results, we synthesize a strategic direction and define an approach to drive our design process. We explore different concepts to establish such core elements as information architecture, key screen layouts, and visual design direction. We then validate the resulting concept with users and stakeholders. Once the feedback is in, we make necessary updates to proceed with designing the rest of the product.

UI/UX Design
After the concept has been approved, we start designing the UI and UX, continuously conducting user tests, and iterating along the way. The main activities include user flow mapping, wireframing, user interface design, interaction design, and prototyping. We hand off design assets to developers using tools like XD, Zaplin, and provide a comprehensive style guide that includes a UI component library, UX guidelines, and complete user flows.

Please send us an email first with a quick summary of your project or an RFP. We usually reply within 24 hours to schedule an introductory call and ask any immediate questions. During our first call, we will ask a lot of questions about the project goals, audience, budget, timeline, and other essential details. We can sign an NDA if necessary, but we always treat all client conversations as confidential.

After the call, we may request various documentation such as a design brief, project requirements, past designs, etc. If we’re redesigning an existing product, we’ll want to schedule a demo or try it ourselves. We will email you a proposal and can schedule a video call to walk you through it. The proposal will include a detailed description of our approach, project phases, activities, and deliverables, team composition, and relevant case studies.

In a situation like this, a great UX designer exhibits thoughtful restraint. They will not take critique personally, but use it as an opportunity to dig deeper and uncover the real reasons why a client may not like a design. Great UX designers are objective; they rely on tried and true principles, past learnings, white papers and studies, best practices, standards, and design conventions that have been tested, studied, and validated. Accordingly, they should be able to back up their designs based on those above.

Typically, in these circumstances, a misalignment has occurred between what the client was looking for and what the designer was trying to achieve. A great designer would take a step back and ask smart questions to uncover the issues a client may have with the design. Is the client subjective as in, “I don’t like that color?” The designer would inquire why and make sure the client understands that design decisions are based on sound principles—color theory, for example—and not subjective opinion.

Also listen for examples of when the designer backed up design decisions based on analytics data and testing (staying objective), and how they presented facts and findings to make their case.

Some client feedback may be for compelling business reasons. For example, the client may feel that a simple solution misses valuable opportunities for revenue-generating ad placement. A good designer would listen patiently and incorporate the feedback into the next iteration, understanding that arriving at the optimal design is a balancing act between business needs, technical feasibility, and the designer’s desire to create the best UX.

Listen to the UX designer to describe it as a user-centered design approach, a process. As Tim Brown, president, and CEO of IDEO, a famed global design consultancy explains it: “‘Design thinking’ is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

Design thinking is a method for the generation of solutions and a practical, creative resolution of problems. It’s about uncovering insights into the unmet needs of your target audience. It’s a form of solution-based or solution-focused thinking, with the intent of producing a constructive future result. Most of all, it’s a ‘people first’ approach—a design process mindset that designs products around people’s needs, motivations, and behaviors.

The design cost of anything depends on the customization of design needed by the client, just like the type of burger you go for in McDonald’s has a different cost.

We try to give as much elbow room as possible we can. Although with every step in project completion, we tend to take your feedback and make all the minor changes, closing it on your approval. We are open to space of 2-3 rounds for significant revisions at no cost.

There must be lots of vendors available to do the task. So as the question asks why to UIUX Studios, the answer is because we value your work and have every knowledge to provide you with the best of it. We provide you with possible turnaround time and quality assurance with long term support.

THE PROJECT IS CONFIRMED WITH 50% ADVANCE DEPOSIT. After the sign off the project is started and completed as per the scope provided and all the minor changes are done, the rest amount of 50% is collected and support for any other changes is provided to you. We also have monthly subscription programs.

Yes, we follow specific instructions provided by you for the designs that we create. This also includes any brand guidelines.

You get 100% ownership of the files the moment we deliver them to you.

Yes, you can use our services as a white-label service. We already work with a lot of design companies who extend our services to their clients.

Development FAQ's

There are multiple factors such as demography, cost, time to enter the market, etc. which help you decide whether you should implement an app to one between iOS and Android or both.

You should ask the following questions to yourself to get the right answer:

Which demographic you want to target your app?

Which platform does your target audience use?

How much budget you have to invest in the project?

When you have clear answers to all the above asked questions, you would be able to decide about the platform you want to target; however, UIUX Studios does have consultants to provide clients with a better assistant.

Every app is different, and so is their cost. It’s hard to quote a single cost of two mobile app developments of the same type. They are the features and functionalities which decide the cost of a mobile app development project. But generally, an app may cost somewhere from $1,000 to 100,000 and more.

Here is an insight into the standard process followed by Rapidsoft Technologies:

  • Project Discovery & Understanding

  • Scoping & Estimations

  • Wire-framing & Functionality

  • Design & Development

  • Testing

  • App Store Optimization

  • Publishing

  • Maintenance & Support

Yes, we offer the option to engage us on an ad-hoc basis for support or have monthly retainer options should you require a more consistent and reliable level of service.

Ad-hoc support can work for projects that need minimal support to avoid the need for fixed ongoing monthly costs. However, this can be at the expense of responsivity as requests are scheduled based on when our resource is available.

Most of our clients choose to have at least a small monthly support retainer to get the best responsivity, as dedicated time is scheduled months in advance. If you have a highly technical project with us, then we would recommend opting for a monthly support retainer to cover small ad-hoc changes, improvements, updates, and support.

We base our retainer pricing on the amount of development and support hours you need each month. The number of hours that you need depends on many factors such as the size of your project, or the number of new features you are likely to need each month that you’d like to be covered by your retainer arrangement. It’s important to us that you get value-for-money so we’d recommend putting together a nice-to-have list so that your allocation is used each month on value-adding improvements.

Should you have ongoing project requirements beyond the launch of the first version of your website or app, then you may want to consider taking an AGILE approach to your project and have an ongoing retainer arrangement with us that allows us to build, test and deploy larger new features every month. Under this agreement, we would have a retainer allowance, which pays for enough time to develop significant new features. At the start of each month, we would agree on the work that is going to form part of the next sprint (i.e., the next 2-4 weeks) and would deliver the work at the end of that period.

Clients who favor AGILE, typically understand that we need to perform significant amounts of work over the coming months, but they might not know when they need what feature, or if the requirements will change. It’s common for start-ups to go AGILE, as the way that users engage with the product once it launches can have a significant impact on which features or changes need to be prioritized, or may give light to new high-priority changes that would be difficult to predict before launch.

We follow both Waterfall and AGILE practices depending on the process that's best suited to your business and the way you want to work with us.

Here is how to decide which approach to adopt.

Most clients who come to us with a new project want us to provide a fixed-price quotation to complete an agreed scope of work. It makes sense from a budget perspective, and you need a fixed figure to plan for or sign-off with purchasing. If this represents you, then we will most likely follow a Waterfall approach to project management to deliver the first version of your project.

Most clients who come to us with a new project want us to provide a fixed-price quotation to complete an agreed scope of work. It makes sense from a budget perspective, and you need a fixed figure to plan for or sign-off with purchasing. If this represents you, then we will most likely follow a Waterfall approach to project management to deliver the first version of your project.

This process is less flexible than an agile approach, which allows big sweeping changes according to business needs, but it means you know exactly what you’re getting, exactly when you’ll get it, and exactly what it will cost.

With AGILE you identify an approximate direction that you want your site or app to go in (product roadmap) but you don’t define it all upfront. Instead, you work in repeated one-month (or less) cycles called a Sprint. At the start of each sprint, you agree with the work that will be completed in that period, and how success looks.

The AGILE process is far more flexible than a waterfall approach: it allows drastic changes to the project according to your business needs and changing requirements but does not have that long-term future prediction that waterfall provides.

Think of it as lots of mini-waterfall projects. Each sprint happens at the end of a short period; you can release new features and versions regularly, and change the plan for what will be developed as your priorities inevitably change. With AGILE, instead of defining a project cost, you define a monthly budget that relates to the amount of development time that you require.

In summary: Waterfall is less flexible but provides better budget certainty if you know your requirements are unlikely to change over the life of the project. AGILE is more flexible and gives you a process that comfortably allows for regular change as your priorities shift, but also requires a more flexible pay-for-time approach to billing. If you want to launch a project that changes little over time, then Waterfall may be the best approach for you. If you have lots of features you want to add to your project past the launch of version one, then we’d recommend shifting to the AGILE approach with a fixed monthly budget.

For small requests, typically $1,500 or less, we will invoice for the full amount at the beginning, or on completion of the work.

For medium requests, typically $1,000 - $5000, we will invoice a 50% opening deposit and a final 50% deposit on completion of the work.

For larger scopes of work, we will split the payments over the life of the project at monthly intervals. For example, a $12,000 project over three months would divide into four installments of $3k (25% each).

Any planning day fees are due in advance of the initial planning day meeting.

We work this way because it supports your cash flow, and means that you don’t have to pay too much money upfront in advance of seeing some output from us.

Digital Marketing FAQ's

Before you sign or commit to anything, we have an extensive “Client Questionnaire” that we ask you to fill out so that we can learn more about your needs, clients and industry. There is absolutely no commitment on your part by completing this questionnaire. If you are interested in our services, here’s some tips to get the most out of a digital marketing agency!

Not at all! All contracts and services agreements are on a month to month plan. There are no hidden fees for cancelling – ever. We are happy to report that we have never had a client terminate their services or switch to another provider since we’ve started.

We don’t have any pre-priced budgets. We also do not have any monthly minimums or required buy in packages. Our ability to handle all budgets -big, small and in-between sets us apart. Each client’s campaign is evaluated individually based off their goals, needs and ability. You get back what you put in, so if you can’t afford a comfortable monthly marketing budget, we’ll advise you on your options.

Nobody can guarantee results in digital marketing as there are too many variables, especially with SEO, as Google’s algorithm is a secret. What we can do is point to a highly successful track record across all sorts of sectors and put you in contact with some of our clients if you want to see the kind of results we can produce.

Also, trust us when we tell you that we aren’t happy with results unless you are!

At UIUX Studios, we like to keep our clients up-to-date. We send monthly reports outlining performance, as well as work completed and upcoming work. In addition, we will also show you how to use Analytics and set up appropriate dashboards so you can keep track of performance yourselves.

We also provide action lists detailing all the areas we believe need working on, with appropriate due dates.

If that isn’t enough, we also will be in regular contact and if possible will spend time in your office working alongside you.

We don’t do account managers At UIUX Studios; all our clients have our direct contact details, including phone (landline and mobile), email and social networking accounts. What’s more, we can arrange regular calls and visits to make sure you’re always up-to-date with the project.

Digital marketing is a bit of a catch-all phrase to cover all the services we offer. There are likely all sorts of definitions, but in our particular case it covers anything based online. This includes:

  • SEO

  • PPC

  • Analytics and conversion rate optimisation

  • Content creation and marketing

  • Social media

  • Email marketing

  • Marketing automation

SEO stands for search engine optimisation, and while there are many detailed explanations, the best one we can think of is “making things appear higher in Google (or any other search engine)”. In our case, we also break SEO into on-site and off-site SEO.

On-site SEO works on things on your own site that will help search engines understand what you do and find all the pages on your site. Off-site SEO is concerned with creating links back to your site in order to help demonstrate relevance and popularity to Google.

It is obviously more technical than that, but we reckon these are good summaries.

When you opt for a full-service SEO package, you’ll receive a custom search engine optimization strategy tailored specifically to your website and your companies search ranking goals. At UIUX Studios, we offer a full-service website audit – analyzing your current use of keywords throughout your web copy and meta data. As part of your SEO package, we can implement site-wide changes to your keyword focus, meta titles, and meta descriptions in addition to updating or rewriting your web copy (onsite content). We don’t stop there! We help our small businesses promote themselves by including an offsite content strategy. Your offsite content includes links from articles we write and publish for you as well as relevant and reputable directory listings to help put your business on the map!

PPC stands for pay-per-click, and is a phrase used to describe the paid advertising model available to companies on sites such as Google (the results at the right or top of the normal search results). The name comes from the fact you only pay for the advertising when someone clicks on it.

It is commonly used to refer to Google AdWords, but could equally describe Bing Advertising, Facebook Advertising or any other kind of online advertising where you pay per click.

In a word, yes! However, we generally only act as consultants, as it is much more effective if internal teams are used to speak on behalf of a company. This is because internal teams will be much more familiar with the company, products, tone and customers.

At UIUX Studios, we will happily give training, come up with topics or promotions or find the best social channel for a client to use.

We work with many different social media channels! We work with the major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, LinkedIN and Pinterest. However, we also work with dozens of smaller social media sites as well as emerging ones.

Yes. Social media has many different applications and can work for every company. Social media gives businesses the ability to connect directly with the customers like no other advertising outlet. Sometimes businesses don’t have the time or skills to effectively manage their social media efforts. The experts at Planet 8 Digital can handle all of your social media needs.

It is better to let the professional handle it. You and your staff are experts at what you do and we are the experts of digital marketing. The primary benefit of using a digital marketing agency is experience and resources. A digital marketing agency like Planet 8 has access to knowledge and resources that you may not. Call us for a free evaluation.

This is another tough question, as all projects are different and timescales may often be out of our control (for example, a client’s developer may have no time to work on our recommendations). Our stock answer is that within the first 60 days from the start of the projects, most, if not all, clients will have seen a noticeable improvement.

At UIUX Studios, we always like to sort at least some quick win items first so that the project starts to pay for itself almost immediately, so most clients start to results quicker than that.

Due to its nature, there are relatively few qualifications available within the digital marketing industry. However, At UIUX Studios we are Google Analytics and AdWords qualified, as well as being Marin Certified.

As far as possible, we will always try and use relevantly qualified third parties in the event we engage them for work; for example, copywriters who hold relevant copywriting diplomas or topic specific qualifications.

For your convenience, we also offer website editing services for your WordPress, Magento, Codeignitor and OpenCart sites. Want to start from scratch or create your website? That’s no problem either.

Yes. We are certified Google and Bing Partners! UIUX Studios Digital has been recognized as a leader in Digital Marketing.

Yes, we have a number of clients who have agreed to be contacted by potential clients in order to give feedback on our work and service. We will happily arrange an introduction.