Selecting the right website agency for you
A clear guide to selecting the right agency for your purpose-driven organisation.
Are the agency’s goals aligned with yours?
When a purpose-driven organisation, whether it is a charity, social enterprise, tech for good, sustainable or climate-positive company, prepares to rebuild its website, it’s important they work with an agency that understands their values and goals. However, it’s even more important that the agency also solves the same problems for other clients. Whether it’s storytelling to enhance reputation, conversions to deliver more revenue, or performance for search visibility and reach.
As a purpose-driven organisation, intention matters. Finding an agency to rebuild your website will need to reflect the purpose and goals of the organisation. Working with a web agency that promotes sustainability and specialises in purpose-driven organisations will align with the values promoted within the organisation.
Still, a more important aspect of choosing a web agency is whether they solve problems for you and your customers. There are similarities that every business is looking for, from optimal website performance to engagement on the website through conversions. An agency that builds a website to fit these goals to reach larger audiences within a high-performing website can make the difference. Agencies can often get preoccupied with scope and disregard conversions. While the performance of the build remains important for reach, conversions are ultimately what every organisation is looking for. Being able to balance both conversion and performance is an indicator of a skilled agency.
An agency that focuses on solving these problems rather than simply focusing on aesthetics brings a fresh perspective. This brings a unique framework to each website and adapts to each organisation’s purpose and goals.
Design and technology: Why you need both
One of the most common reasons why a website does not perform well is because they struggle to balance design and technology. Focusing primarily on one can have serious implications, causing a fundamental imbalance on the website and the customer experience. Most agencies fall into one of the two categories: design-led or technically led. Both of these categories can cause serious problems, creating experiences that are too complex or don’t perform well.
A technology-led website builds strong foundations with fast response times and scalable backends. However, they lack human empathy and soul, putting design as a secondary concern. This can often lead to poor storytelling, which can be the difference between converting or disconnecting the audience.
The same follows for a design-led website. Agencies that overly focus on strong visual impact and interactions often ignore the technical development, causing performance issues, not to mention environmental and accessibility concerns and carbon impact that conflicts with the purpose-led nature of their clients. Including auto-running videos and custom interactions can be visually stimulating but can cause conflicts with mobile performance, failing Google’s page speed checks and WCAG’s accessibility standards.
Finding the sweet spot between technology and design-led websites can be vital for purpose-driven organisations. Designers who understand the technical implications of their choices and accessibility, working collectively with developers who understand lightweight micro-interactions and audience psychology, can create the sweet spot. By combining sustainably conscious developers with human-centered design, purposeful websites are built to achieve your mission through conscious design and technical innovations meant to last.
Choosing a website agency that works for your goals
A website build is a collaborative journey that often lasts way beyond the initial build and requires ongoing optimisation. Working with an agency that doesn’t share your core values can cause conflict, while finding an agency that works with your purpose in mind can create a collaborative, long-lasting relationship.
Creating a culturally aligned relationship with the web agency goes beyond the business; the core aspects of the website are managed by like-minded individuals who share a desire to create change. It contributes to how the project is managed, decisions are made, and the core message of the organisation.
An agency that works with purpose-driven organisations understands the importance of accessibility, inclusion, sustainability, and the mission behind the organisation. Purpose-driven web agencies prioritise sustainability and intention. If values are important to your organisation, working with these types of agencies aligns with your views and can create an impactful website.
Whether your organisation fights for climate change or poverty, finding an expert purpose-driven agency to rebuild your website that aligns with your goals makes the difference. Finding the sweet spot between web development and design, balancing conversions and vivid storytelling while maintaining its digital edge is imperative for a successful website build.
Photo by Tanja Tepavac on Unsplash
How AI can help you continuously improve your website
A practical guide to AI-powered optimisation
The term Artificial Intelligence was first coined at Dartmouth in 1956, but the ideas behind it, machine learning and task automation based on programmable rules, had already been around for years. Generative AI, too, isn’t exactly new. In 1961, Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a computer program that could hold basic conversations with humans using natural-sounding, empathic language.
Fast-forward to 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, combining Generative AI with powerful Large Language Models, and suddenly AI moved from niche tech to something that touched daily life. It’s had an impact on how we live and work not seen since smartphones actually became smart in the mid-2000s (anyone remember Blackberrys and Windows Mobile?).
Whether you love it or hate it, AI isn’t going away and it’s going to shape our lives for the foreseeable future, until the next big revolution comes along (still holding out hope for cloning myself to get more done… wait, erm, maybe that’s what AI already is?!).
There are now so many AI tools that help us design and develop websites, from tools that help with wireframing and templating to coding assistants, there are hundreds of excellent and not-so-excellent applications that can help get us to a solution faster than we used to be able to do before. At Pixeled Eggs, we’ve been experimenting with many of them, and using a few (responsibly) in our process. These system are getting more powerful and much better at handling complex solutions. They are also evolving fast, and as they grow, our jobs as designers and developers will evolve with them.
In this article, I want to focus on practical, actionable ways AI can help you maintain and improve your website and make managing your content just a little easier.
How AI can help improve your website
Website content is a broad subject these days and there’s a lot to think about. Your main focus should always be the user and good storytelling. However, writing for the web also requires particular technical and design skills, and as well as writing engaging copy, you need to consider accessibility, SEO and a clear structure. Today, AI tools have evolved from basic generators to powerful assistants across all stages of web design and content.
Content creation and optimisation
Writing
- Tools like Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude are great for getting your first drafts down for website copy, blog posts, product descriptions, and more.
- They can also adjust your tone of voice, suggest better page structures, and rewrite your drafts to suit specific audiences.
- Other options like Copy.ai, Jasper and Anyword, focus more on content marketing and all make bold claims about why their language model is better than their competitors. The trick here is to try a few and see which one fits your style and needs.
Images
- AI-powered image generators like DALL-E 3, Midjourney, and Adobe Firefly allow you to create custom visuals for your website.
- You’ve probably already tried some of these tools and know that getting a result you’re happy with often takes a bit of trial and error, but you’re only limited by your imagination.
- Tools like Canva and Photoshop now feature built-in generated fill or background removal, allowing for a seamless brand image
- Stock platforms like Unsplash remain fantastic for authentic photography for any occasion
- You can also use AI tools to create branded imagery that keeps your website’s look and feel consistent.
Videos
- Video is a powerful way to communicate, and now it’s more accessible and affordable than ever. Tools like RunwayML, Luma Dream Machine and Pictory AI help you easily create and edit professional-looking videos at a fraction of the cost.
- As with images, patience and experimentation are key, but the potential is huge!
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- SEO is technically part of content creation, but deserves its own section. AI tools like Surfer SEO, MarketMuse and Clearscope focus purely on helping you write content that ranks better.
- If you’re using WordPress or Shopify as we do, Yoast SEO (the Premium version) is excellent, and it uses AI to help generate meta titles and descriptions that can improve your click-through rates.
Accessibility
- AI can also help make your website more inclusive. Tools like accessiBe scan your site, flag accessibility issues, and even offer dynamic content and visual adaptations for users with different needs.
- Other tools like Whisper AI allow for close-to-perfect audio captioning for embedded audio and video content, guaranteeing multi-sensory accessibility.
- Accessibility often gets overlooked, but it’s critical for creating a web that’s truly for everyone.
Performance and UX (User Experience) improvements
Not all tools in this category are full AI (yet), but they’re still hugely helpful for optimising your website:
- Hotjar: We’ve been recommending Hotjar to our clients for years. It uses heatmaps and user session recordings to show where people click, scroll, or get stuck. They’re now adding AI-driven insights and they offer discounts for charities and nonprofits so it’s well worth exploring.
- However, Microsoft Clarity now offer basically the same data for free but uses the aggregated user-behaviour data to train its machine learning models, improve its Bing advertising ecosystem, and populate broad web performance metrics.
- Google PageSpeed Insights: This excellent tool analyses your site’s speed (vital for SEO) and gives tips for improvement. Some fixes might need your developer’s help to implement, but others, like resizing images, are easy wins!
- Google Analytics (GA4): GA4 uses more AI to deliver behavioural insights and predictions, helping you move beyond surface-level reporting (numbers) to understanding user patterns.
A few final thoughts on AI
There are lots of other areas where AI is making an impact on website performance, like security and personalisation. But today, we’ve focused mainly on content and usability.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Human oversight is essential.
AI is a great assistant, but it can’t replace your brand’s voice, values, or nuance. Always add the human touch. - Be ethical and mindful.
AI tools raise real concerns around data privacy, bias, and environmental impact (especially energy and water usage for generating images and video). Use it responsibly! - Stay curious.
The world of AI is evolving fast. I find some of the AI News sites a bit too nerdy (even for me!) but if you want to keep up, sites like the AI Tools Directory offer a good, user-friendly overview of new tools.
And remember: You don’t always need a brand-new website.
Sometimes a good tune-up, smarter content, better performance, and more thoughtful design is all it takes to make your existing site even more powerful.
If you’d like a hand making the most of your website and your content, I’d love to chat.
This post has been revised on 29.07.2026