During your search for a firm to help with your software design needs, you may have encountered the phrase, “digital product agency.” However, you may not be quite sure what a digital product agency is or what types of services they provide.
Put simply, digital product agencies specializing in making products and services that are accessible online. This includes Web, Mobile and Connected devices.
Digital product firms can vary with the types of experts they have on staff. Depending on the agency, this can be a mixture or combination of all of the following subject matter experts:
- Product strategy
- Product management
- User research
- Product design
- User experience design
- User interface designers
- Front-end development
- Back-end development
Now that you know what a digital product agency is, let’s take a close look at the value they can add to your business.
#What Can a Digital Product Agency Help With?
Unless your business already has a dedicated digital product team on-hand, creating your own digital products can be quite time-consuming and challenging.
In some cases, like for web products, you can start with templated solutions such as Shopify or WordPress. But even in those cases, creating digital products or services has a steep learning curve.
By hiring a digital product agency, you can get your mobile apps or other software to market faster.
These agencies can augment your existing team with outside expertise in design and technology. The end result is a digital product that performs better and yields a world-class customer experience.
You'll also get your products to market with less rework.
Really great digital product agencies have an end-to-end process that helps you understand whether the product idea you want to pursue is worth pursuing. And they also have processes in place that help you design and build prototypes quickly, and test them often.
Besides helping grow your business and improving your customer experience, digital product agencies will also improve your employee experience.
They will provide your staff with custom software solutions that help them work faster and boost their productivity. This will help reduce your costs and risk.
If you need a high-performing digital product, partnering with an experienced product firm is the way to go.
#What Services Do They Offer?
Great digital product agencies offer a full suite of services.
They have the expertise and knowledge necessary to handle every aspect of digital product creation and implementation.
In addition, they offer ongoing support to ensure that your product continues to operate at peak levels for years to come.
Common digital product agency services include:
#Product Strategy
When you partner with a digital product agency, they can help you to bring your vision to fruition with less friction.
During the consultation phase, a digital product agency will gather key insights about your company’s needs and goals. They will use this information to develop a winning product strategy and roadmap.
If you want to create a successful digital product, then a pre-market strategy is essential.
With the help of a digital product agency, you can ensure that no detail is neglected. They will address common issues, such as:
- How to plan the MVP
- What are the resources you need to build the product
- What are the technical specifications of the product
- How to monetize the product
- What is the right pricing strategy
- What are the right metrics to track
- How to increase user engagement
#Product and User Research
A digital product agency will also oversee all product and user research.
They will find out what similar products currently exist. They will use this information to determine how you can differentiate your solution in the market.
They will also conduct interviews and usability studies with your potential customers, and the customers of your competitiors. This will help you understand how your customers think about your solution as well as existing solutions in the space.
By learning directly from your customers and the gaps competitors, a digital product agency can drastically increase the odds that your new product will succeed.
#Design
Once they have completed sufficient product and user research and created a winning strategy, the digital firm will begin designing your product.
They will meticulously review every single detail to ensure that the product is designed according to your vision.
During the design phase, they will lay the framework for a truly innovative product that will resonate with consumers.
This will look like:
- Application or website maps
- User stories
- User flows
- User interface design
- Brand identity development
- Hand-off kits to front-end and back-end development
#Development
The final stage of creating your digital product is development.
Each previous step serves as a building block to the development stage. Digital product agencies work with you to bring your user interface to life.
Front-end Developers, Back-end Developers and Quality Assurance Analysts work together to ensure your product is built to design specifications.
Once development is complete, it is time for release. However, a digital product agency’s work is not quite finished. Even the best digital products have room for improvement.
A digital product agency should perform continuous testing and Q&A to gather feedback on the project’s performance. They can push out further updates and fix any bugs that may have arrived post-release. This review process allows them to optimize the user experience.
#Maintenance
Some digital product agencies specialize in making the products. Others specialize in maintenance. And others will do both, the creation and maintenance.
When it comes to maintenance, digital product agencies can help you maintain the design or the development. They can help you ensure your product is always up, is performant, bug-free and continues to meet user's needs.
#What Kinds of Outputs Do You Get?
Digital product agencies can create a wide array of outputs. These products are designed with your goals and vision in mind to ensure that they meet the unique needs of your company.
Some of the most common digital product agency outputs include:
- Mobile apps (ie: Video platforms, social networks)
- Web apps (ie: Content publishing, video streaming)
- eCommerce sites
- Dashboards and widgets for reporting
If you can dream it, a digital product agency can make it a reality.
In fact, they can often create your product faster and more efficiently than an in-house team. This is because they have unique experience and expertise that your staff may not.
#With Pulp, a Web and Mobile Digital Product Agency
If you are looking to make a Web or Mobile product, we can help.
With Pulp is digital product agency that designs, develops and maintains digital products.
We have an intimate understanding of the product design and development process as well as what user's come to expect on Web and Mobile devices.
Contact us today to book your free consultation.