With an array of inexpensive do-it-yourself options, there is room for a lot of questions and confusion when hiring a web designer for your business. Do you try to do it yourself? If so, how do you know you have done a good job. If I were to hire a company to design my website, how do I know how much I should spend or how in depth should my site be? One thing is certain: Creating a web site that can be marketed to google and other search engines, as well as something that properly represents your business, is extremely important. In most service based industries your marketing via advertisement averages 50 % of all new business, while the remaining 50 % is driven from networking, repeat business and word of mouth.
If your business is exposed to more businesses via advertisement, you are then multiplying your chances for more business via networking, marketing and repeat business which will logarithmically build your business in a successful direction.
Web Based Platform
Regardless of who designs your business website, web based platforms are the smart way to go. Using a content management system which runs via a web server through the creation process like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal or Magento give business owners an array of options.
Not only are you able to update your site on your own, you can have many different users and/or designers work on your site. You simply create multiple logins. You can integrate your business right into the design of the website by having customers register for your website, which in turn enables the mass mailing feature (since the website is ran completely using the internet) for newsletters, updates and general sales benefits. There is an endless list of benefits of having a web based platform for a small business:
- Multiple Users
- Email Newsletters
- PHP functionality for Booking Systems, or Invoice
- Easy to change and update and easy for multiple different people to update
- Embed Flash rather than a full flash site (more on this below)
- Affiliate networking
Customer Service
Well I'll come right out with it: When you hire a company like Choice Web Design you are not just paying for web design, you are paying for customer service. There are tons of do-it-yourself options available on the market today from hosting with Godaddy or Hostgator and templates with demo content that can simply be edited to your business and you are good to go.... to some extent. The issue is the time to create a site, the trouble you might run into along the way and the customer service you might need when using web products. I think more importantly, what do you plan to do with your Search Engine Optimization!?
Learning SEO is no easy task. Not only do you have to know a lot about websites and the internet and linking and title tags etc. but you are going to need the time and the drive to accomplish the SEO. We can either do it for you for a fee, or teach you how to build your sites link profile (which in turn is good SEO) after we build you a site. This is something that many companies offer (by the way, we build every site with great SEO tactics but any competitive market is going to need more than just site creation SEO) and is a key component to getting into a nice website with good web presence at a reasonable fee.
If you were to google web design or small business web design you would more than likely be overwhelmed with options on a national level. That is why many businesses decide to find local companies in their area where they can tangibly speak with someone on the phone and even meet from time to time to ensure that there is a real person on the other end! So again, customer service is what you are looking for, it's what you are paying for and mainly, it's what you need!!!!
