Hiring a Digital Product Agency for World-Class Customer Experiences
By Alissa Rogers
An Introduction to Digital Product Marketing
Digital product agencies are not going to make your 30-second spot for the Super Bowl. Or design your billboards for your national campaign. Or purchase media buys. That's not to say those things aren't important — but they're old school. Digital product agencies are new school: designing, engineering and strategizing for brands that power consumer experiences (from websites and apps to e-commerce, AR and VR) across every industry in society today.
What Does a Digital Product Agency Do?
A digital product agency consists of seasoned professionals in product strategy, product management, user and market research, user experience design, brand and messaging. As experts in digital experiences and products, the primary responsibility of an agency of this type is to research solutions, design them, develop them and set them up to be successfully scaled and marketed.
Electric driving — built for a progressive future. YML partnered with Polestar to create a new, state-of-the-art web experience as impressive and exhilarating as the car itself.
Organizations hire a digital product agency to build ecosystems (such as websites or apps) that enable the customer to interact directly with the business and its products or services. The functionality of a digital product can range depending on the client and industry — from booking healthcare appointments or ordering groceries to making a payment or tracking one’s health.
Building Customer-centric Experiences
Digital products are ideal for connecting with customers and generating business in a way that works best for the end user. If consumers can use the website or application to streamline their existing workflows (or create a habit for new ones), they will integrate the digital solution into their everyday life. The digital solutions that enable a consumer to save time and complete a task more efficiently ultimately build higher brand loyalty and faster growth for the business.
Making and marketing digital products requires a vastly different strategy than manufacturing physical products. Developing successful digital products needs an innovative approach to ensure the product is visually appealing and customer-centric in its design — and has a technological infrastructure that can support the company as it scales. At the end of the day, it’s about building better consumer experiences. A successful product drives impact for the client’s business by creating valuable experiences for their customers.
What an Experienced Digital Product Agency Can Do For You
When determining which digital product agency to work with, it’s important to consider the ones who have experience across every aspect of digital strategy. The proven way to deliver maximum value to your customers is by leveraging relevant content, intuitive and user-friendly design, connected website and applications, scalable development, thoughtful touchpoints, seamless user experience and impactful user interface — all in one place. Each of these elements should be weaved throughout the entire process to produce a one-of-a-kind end product for your brand.
Whether you need to create a completely new product or to evaluate and optimize an existing solution for improved efficiency, a digital product agency with the right experience can help you quickly meet (and exceed) your business goals. Speed to market is crucial to a product’s success in the digital space. Without the ability to iterate fast and release a quality product faster, your brand risks falling behind its competitors.
The future of grocery, built in California. See YML's award-winning work with Thrive Market.
But it doesn’t end with the launch — most enterprises require sufficient and ongoing support from their development company to ensure the digital ecosystem is always at the forefront of customer expectations and technology trends.
At YML, we have the necessary experience to execute your vision from start to finish. We deliver digital products and services that put the user first to craft an experience they love to use. From pitch to product launch, YML is rapidly prototyping, testing and optimizing to surpass business goals and lend support. We offer strategy, engineering, design and content services to elevate your brand and push it forward at speed and scale.
The Stages of Digital Product Development
The process a company follows will determine whether or not the product is a success. The methodology that balances comprehensive research and meticulous attention to detail with shortened timelines and constant iterations will result in a higher quality product that can continue to provide value to the business (and users) in perpetuity.
To ensure this balance can be met, a digital product agency should incorporate the following steps in their product development:
Analysis & Research
Wireframe
Design/Prototype
Test
Implement
Launch
Analyze, Test, Scale
How YML Provides Industry-Leading Digital Product Design & Development
Born and raised in Silicon Valley, we export the mindset of innovative thinking and rapid experimentation to create world-class digital products for companies of all sizes, all over the world. Our team brings an array of experience building and scaling digitally native brands alongside brands looking to enter the digital space and optimize their infrastructure.
We are designers, builders and makers. More than half of the YML internal team is made up of developers and engineers who do more than build code — they help conceptualize, prototype, build and ship new digital products that elevate the customer experience and set industry precedents for digital style and functionality.
We aren’t a start-up, but we embody the best characteristics of a start-up: the ability to be agile and set a foundation for fast and scalable growth. YML develops customizable solutions that will quickly adapt to any changes the enterprise could possibly face. For us, it isn’t about just building experiences that look good — we consider digital strategy and software development from the start to make sure the product infrastructure can scale and support the business for years to come.
UX design and market research is just as important as development. Our expert team of empathetic designers put themselves in the shoes of the consumer to prioritize intentional decisions that will further streamline and enhance the experience.
YML-Built Products Impact 600M+ Users
In such a crowded space, digital products require powerful innovation to stand out. Only the companies with the most creative, well-built products will last. Our work has been used by more than half a billion people worldwide through YML-built consumer experiences across healthcare, financial services, grocery, e-commerce, travel and hospitality, retail and more.
We’ve partnered with Fortune 500 and start-ups companies alike, but our quality of work and impact never waver no matter the company size. For large, established enterprises, we’re experienced in helping them optimize and transition their platforms to be digital-first across a variety of industries. From healthcare and healthtech to e-commerce and retail, our award-winning enterprise applications allow them to continue to grow and exceed customer expectations while keeping their brand consistent and easy to interact with.
Some of our most notable work includes:
Designing The Home Depot’s mobile app which boosted the company's mobile revenue 2x in one year — and was awarded best omni-channel retail experience by Forrester.
Collaborating with the world’s largest company on their ResearchKit project to effectively transform medical research at speed and scale.
Building the product landing page for Yeti and their new collection of bags. A first for the brand, this online site helped introduce them into a new product space. Bonus points that it sold out its first day, too.
While we have the expertise to tackle the digital needs of big brands, we are equally as experienced in helping new companies introduce themselves in the digital world. YML is proud to have worked with nine start-ups (and counting) who have gone on to IPO or receive billion-dollar valuations with the digital foundations we’ve built.
If you’re ready to build something together, reach out and let’s get started.