Website strategy
How to Choose a Web Agency in Germany
What separates a production shop from a genuine consultancy, what it costs, and how to write a brief that gets you real numbers.
What the market looks like
Germany has no shortage of web agencies. Finding one that treats your business problem as the brief is harder.
The German web agency market splits into two distinct types, and most buyers hire the wrong one by accident. **Production shops execute specifications: they take a brief, build to it, and deliver.** They are efficient when the brief is already correct. Digital consultancies challenge the brief first, ask about your sales process, your CRM, your lead qualification path, and your conversion data before they open Figma. One type optimises delivery; the other optimises outcomes.
Most B2B relaunch projects fail not because the agency built it badly, but because the brief was wrong from the start. The site gets rebuilt on the wrong information architecture, with copy written for an audience that does not exist, and without integration into the commercial systems that determine whether it generates pipeline. A beautiful site that does not convert is not a website problem: it is a brief problem.
What good looks like: the agency asks about your sales process in the first meeting, not your brand preferences. They want to know how many leads the current site generates, what happens to a lead after the form is filled, and what the conversion rate is at each stage. If the first meeting is about colour palettes and competitor sites, you are talking to a production shop.
Red flags
Five things an agency says that should make you pause before signing.
01
They show you a portfolio before asking what problem you are solving
A portfolio is social proof, not a discovery process. If the first conversation is about what they have built rather than what you need, you are being sold to, not advised. Good agencies ask questions before they show work.
02
The proposal has a fixed design phase before any discovery
Design without discovery is decoration. If the proposal shows weeks of design before a single workshop or stakeholder interview, the agency is working from assumptions, not from your actual requirements. Discovery is not a budget line item you skip: it is what makes design decisions defensible.
03
They quote before they understand your CRM and analytics setup
A website that does not connect to your CRM, marketing automation, and tracking infrastructure is a brochure. If the agency has not asked how leads currently flow from site to sales, they cannot price the integration work. A quote without this context is missing half the project.
04
The project manager is the only person you will meet before kick-off
The person who sells you the project and the person who builds it are often different people at larger agencies. Ask to meet the lead developer and the strategist before you sign. If that is not possible before kick-off, it will not become easier after it.
05
They call it a digital transformation
This phrase signals that the agency is selling a category, not a solution to your specific problem. If the proposal uses this term more than once, ask them to define exactly what will be different for your sales team, your ops team, and your customers 90 days after launch. Vague language covers vague scope.
What it costs
A B2B website relaunch in Germany costs between €15,000 and €80,000 depending on scope.
The lower end (€15,000 to €25,000) covers five to ten pages, a template-based design, WordPress or a comparable CMS, basic SEO configuration, and a standard form integration. **This is the right budget for companies that need a clean, functional presence and have a simple, stable content structure.** It does not cover custom design systems, content strategy, analytics setup, or CRM integration. If you need those, budget accordingly.
The middle range (€25,000 to €45,000) is where most serious B2B projects land. This buys custom design, a configured CMS with editing workflows for your team, foundational SEO work including metadata, site structure, and indexing configuration, one or two external integrations, and a proper analytics implementation. This is also where content strategy work sits: information architecture, messaging review, and page structure aligned to the buyer journey.
The higher end (€45,000 to €80,000) applies to multi-market or multilingual projects, deep CRM and marketing automation integration, conversion rate optimisation infrastructure, and performance-first builds where Core Web Vitals are commercially significant. Ongoing maintenance and hosting are separate from build cost in every range. Budget €500 to €2,500 per month for post-launch support depending on complexity.
What to put in your brief
The six questions your brief must answer before any agency can give you a real number.
✓
What is the primary commercial objective of the new site, and how will you measure whether it has been achieved in the first six months?
✓
Who is the primary audience, and what do they need to believe or understand before they contact you or convert?
✓
What does the current site do well that must be preserved, and what does it fail at that the new site must fix?
✓
Which systems must the new site connect to, including CRM, marketing automation, analytics, payment, and booking tools?
✓
Who owns content on the new site after launch, and what is their technical capability with a CMS?
✓
What is the decision-making process internally, including how many stakeholders have sign-off and what their review timeline looks like?
How we approach website projects
We challenge the brief before we build anything.
Every website project starts with a brief review, not a quote. We read what you have sent us, ask the questions it does not answer, and run a scope session before we estimate anything. That session covers your sales process, your current site performance, your CRM setup, and what success looks like 90 days after launch. The output is a written project brief, not a proposal deck. See the kinds of projects we have delivered in our work and how we structure website engagements.
We work with one named lead per project throughout. No handoff after the strategy phase. If the brief changes during the project, we tell you what that means for scope and timeline before it affects the build. There are no surprises on the final invoice.
Concrete solution
Bring the operational risk.You get a clear diagnosis and a concrete next step.
We are the right fit if you want a team that pushes back when it matters.
Reviewing first?
Company evidenceon the site.
Engagements with commercial outcomes on Work. Team bios and operating model on About. Nothing to download. Review it before you commit to a call. Open to review. Commit when ready.