If you own a business, it has become a necessity to have a website. Having a digital presence is vital for any business nowadays to succeed. One of the most important parts of your business’s digital presence is your website. They are a hub of information, a platform that can provide 24-hour service to customers, and overall, an amazing marketing tool to find new leads. The problem many business owners run into with their website is…they don’t want to spend a ton of money on developing it.
Yes, developing an awesome and accessible website can be costly, but think of it this way. Your website is one of your most powerful marketing tools – so invest in it wisely. It’s sort of like a virtual brick-and-mortar location for your business. You don’t want to set up shop in a dinghy building that needs a lot of work if you can help it. You ideally want a place with a bright, large sign, an airy feel for customers, enough space to stock your product without having every shelf busting at the seams. The same goes for your website. You want a website that is bright, easy to navigate. One that contains ample information to answer your customers’ questions, and maybe even a customer service live chat so that you maximize how many site visitors you convert into paying customers.
That being said, you also want to make sure you’re picking the right web designer for the job. Before you have your brother, cousin or the guy around the corner build your site for you, it’s worth a call to get a couple of quotes from local website development companies. We get that as a new business your budget might not be huge. But, starting a business from scratch especially in today’s virtual world, you’ve got to get the best first impression possible right out of the gate. When you’re talking to website design or web development companies though you should ask many questions. Also, know that these are 5 red flags to look out for when seeking help with building a new website. Don’t forget to ask for examples of work completed in the past too, to ensure whomever you work with can actually build what they tell you they can.
1. You have to pay a monthly fee beyond your domain name and hosting to keep your website.
Before you sign a contract for a new website you need to read the fine print. It’s important to understand what working with that specific company will be like and what their website build will entail. Ask them once it’s built what rights you have to your website. Some website designers may charge you a monthly fee or a maintenance package. But what is that monthly fee for? What does maintenance actually mean to them, if there aren’t any changes being made? Be sure to ask questions about any additional charges and what they’re for in detail. Some web developers will charge a monthly fee, regardless of whether you need changes made or not. Others will charge on an as-needed basis for work that needs to be done. It’s a downfall to have to pay a monthly fee to a website designer forever. Especially when good website designers can make you a site and hand it over to you without having you pay anything ongoing aside from your domain and hosting fees. So, if you’re charged a monthly fee, this could be an indication that they are either inexperienced and using a template system in the background to make their job easier or are trying to take advantage to make a few extra bucks here and there. Do your research and be sure to shop around to see what other web designers are offering.
2. You are restricted in what you can edit on your website.
Be careful of who you choose as your web designer, and what rights you have to your website. Some designers can be sneaky and will leave out the fact that once you’ve built your website with them, they own your website. Or, they lock out certain features so that you aren’t able to have another website developer work on your site after it’s built. This can mean anything from restrictions on what you can change on your site to your rights to keep overall ownership of the site. The only reason that does make sense as to why a certain area of your website, like plugins on a WordPress website, are locked out, is so that you don’t accidentally break it. It’s easy to mess something up if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, if this is their theory, ask them to create admin logins for you. One is a content editor login so that you can post blogs, edit pages, etc. and a second that is a webmaster login, with full access to everything.
When it comes to your website, you want control of it. If you’re limited to what you can edit or restricted to really bad template options and tools, that’s likely the wrong website designer to work with. Where possible, see what other people have said about certain web designers or web development companies before signing a contract or deal. Websites are powerful marketing tools, but so are customer reviews. If a web designer has a bunch of negative reviews (or even no reviews at all) this is a red flag you should not ignore.
3. You have to sign in to your website through their proprietary login screen
A web development company may tell you that they can build your site and dashboard for it all in one place. As an extra perk, they’ll mention that you will have one place to log in to, to access all this information – their proprietary login. Sounds great, right? But here’s the catch. Most of the time when a web designer does this, it once again limits what you have access to on your site. They will lock down different areas so you can’t make changes to them yourself. In addition, you won’t likely have direct access to the hard files it’s built from so if you ever want to move it, you have to have a few tough conversations. You’ll likely have to pay them to make any changes, even if you don’t want to continue working with them anymore. Don’t get stuck in this kind of situation after investing a pretty penny in your digital presence.
We’ve had clients come to us in the past with the hope of having a few changes made to their website. However, due to the web developer they had to build, we couldn’t help them because they didn’t own their company’s website – their designer did. So, we, unfortunately, had to rebuild their entire website from scratch – as a look-alike – because of the contract they had with the previous web designer. Save yourself money and time rebuilding your site because you don’t have control over it — Hire the right web development company from the get-go.
4. They expect you to provide everything
A good partnership between a website developer and business owner gives you options and access to resources to help create your website. If you provide all the content for your website, it’s a cost and time saver for your web developer. However, you know your business inside and out but, you’re hiring a professional to help you craft a website that converts traffic into customers. That’s their specialty! Your website team should help you create content that will help you rank well on search engines, optimize your site, and make it look good at the same time. Website design is more than just creating a beautiful-looking site. It’s about making sure it’s accessible, as well as ensuring it has the right content and is set up to rank well in search engines. A good web designer should be there for each step of the process. From sitting down with you to identify the look, feel, content, and function of your website, to launching it and showing you how it works.
5. They don’t seem knowledgeable about SEO
Again, it’s one thing for a web designer to know how to make a site look beautiful, but it’s another thing to make it rank well in terms of SEO. You could have the most amazing-looking website in existence, but it doesn’t mean anything if your web designer doesn’t know a thing about SEO. Granted not every business owner is focused on ranking higher on search engines, and if you have a specific look and feel in mind, it might not rank well just because you want it designed that way. For example, if your homepage has a big photo spanning the entire page, and just your logo on it in the center, with a simple navigation bar, that doesn’t hold much value in Google’s eyes. Because of a lack of content, it won’t rank very well unless it has many pages built into it in other places that have meatier content. Before hiring a web development company, it’s good for you to have a general understanding of what SEO is, and how much a designer knows about it before signing a contract with them. If they can’t provide you with an in-depth explanation about what SEO is, you may need to move on to another web designer.
At 3SIXTY Marketing Solutions, we can help you design the website you need! Whether you’re starting from scratch or need a few changes made to your current website, we can do it all. With our vast knowledge of website design and SEO, in addition to customer acquisition, conversions, marketing, and advertising, we know how to make your site beautiful, but also how to make it functional, accessible, and have it rank well. We can even help you write the content, custom design your graphics or logo as well as create engaging videos that help sell your products or services. We’re your one-stop shop for all your marketing needs! To get started, give us a call at 705-252-4180. We can help you throughout the entire website designing process from start to finish – no prob-llama!
