Being an eBusiness expert in the web development field for over a decade, I have had many business owners and entrepreneurs tell me about their biggest challenges for marketing their business online. One of the biggest problems is getting a quality website that receives targeted traffic, converts leads and customers and produces referrals through viral sharing methods.
Not what you want and what often happens when you hire a web design and development company
When you hire a web design and development company because of cost, you may be throwing your money away. Web development services are not at all like buying a car. If you buy a Lexus, you will buy the same auto from any dealer – the only difference may be the cost and the service you receive. But when it comes to your website, no two companies will produce the same website project in the same amount of time and with the same quality and continued support. It is important to compare apples with apples and unfortunately on the web, that is not always easy to do.
Before you venture into the land of Elance for finding a cheap web developer, be aware that unless you know exactly what you need, can communicate through language barriers and show that company a blueprint design for each page, you are heading for severe stress and disappointment. Keep in mind that programmers are rarely designers and marketing professionals. They are like robots who if you’re lucky, do what you tell them to do but no more. Another truth about cheap developers on Elance is that many will inflate the amount of hours for the project so they can charge you more. And getting a robust project that will meet your needs at a cost you can afford are other major problems to be addressed later on.
Even when you pay more for your web design and development services, there is no assurance that price will produce a quality project. My company re-developed some of the worst websites originally produced by competitors who charge five times more. These companies provide only a fraction of the services that are needed for producing a quality project. If they offer marketing at all, it is generally outsourced and becomes a situation where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing and doesn’t much care.
I’ve seen business owners waste thousands of dollars for poor quality web design and development, often with more than one company. At the end of the day which turned into a year or more in some cases, they were left with a website project that received no benefit from search engines, navigated like a black hole, confused the visitor and failed miserably in converting traffic into leads and customers. I recall one eCommerce website where the visitor had to click a total of four links before they could add a product to the shopping cart which was also a disaster.
How do you find a good web design and development company?
When looking for a good web development company to work with, do your homework and don’t base your decision on cost alone. Work with a company who has been in business for at least five years and has a proven track record for being honest, dependable and producing quality websites that integrate web 2.0, SEO, list building, quality content, eCommerce (when appropriate) and viral sharing tools. Look at customer satisfaction for development and follow-up technical support. Choose a company that has expertise in design, development and state-of-the-art internet marketing through social media, blogging, SEO and viral marketing.
Success on the Internet begins with a well designed and developed website project
A well designed site will integrate SEO and land the visitor on information relevant to their keyword search. The landing page should be designed to engage them in the content and lead them to a single and important action. The page should have plenty of white space around the content and should not confuse the visitor with distracting information. The site should allow the website owner to integrate captivating content such as titles, video, audio, formatted descriptive text with links and keyword tags. If eCommerce is to be included, it should make the buying process easy and build a list of customers that can be used for follow-up via email marketing. Whenever possible, it should allow for customers to leave ratings and reviews. With the ability to send a message into cyberspace through viral marketing, each item of content should include a viral sharing tool to make it easy and encourage visitors to share content with their Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and email list.
When at all possible, choose a content management system platform. This will allow you to manage your own content and take advantage of promoting your products and services when your market is hot and likely to buy. Otherwise you stand to miss your valuable window of opportunity while waiting for your webmaster to get around to making your changes. Although there are some good content management software solutions, these can be confusing to use, take months of development time and must be configured by a web professional. You may be sadly disappointed when you discover the shortcomings on these projects.
An affordable and instant web builder solution
Watching my market of entrepreneurs and small business owners struggle with their web design and development for so many years motivated me to solve that problem with an easy instant website builder. This system overcomes all the challenges for achieving quality web design and development while offering an affordable and ready to use solution. You can demo this software and sign up for a free no risk 30 day trial.
