Surprisingly most small businesses do not realise that when investing in a website design you need to make sure you are getting value for money. Sure a £200 deal with your brother-in-laws best mate seems like a bargain at the time. Great, you are getting a web site at the fraction of the cost and soon you will be raking in the cash, right?

Sadly no, unless your brother-in-laws best mate is a web designer in addition to understanding SEO and also how to market your company in social media, oh and setting up a blog to promote your business with original content obviously!!

Does it now seem like such a good deal?? A site built with Mr Site (no offence Mr Site) is hardly what search engines are looking for especially in today’s competitive environment of the www. That is of course if your brother-in-laws best mate knows how to submit your website to the Search Engines in the first place……

Does it still seem like a good deal? Is your website really going to work as hard as you do to draw in your customers? Or will you realise, after spending that hard earned £200, that after 6 months actually nothing is happening with your website and have to fork out another £5-600 or most likely more,  to have it fixed?

If you are considering a website and do have an offer that seems too good to be true

  • it probably is and will end up costing you more money in the long run and
  • step back and think about what you want your website to say about you as a professional company. Much like you wouldn’t leave your child in the care of a monkey, you really shouldn’t leave your website to chance.

Some questions to ask when considering using a web designer or friend of a friend are:

1. Have you designed websites before and can you show me any examples? (if they hesitate walk away!)
2. Do you know what SEO stands for (It is Search Engine Optimisation but you would be amazed the number of people who do not know!)
3. How do you plan to promote my website? (answer should be using SEO, Social Media, Blogs, Search Engines etc)
4. Are there any additional costs and what happens when I want to change some details on my site? (We only apply additional costs if major changes are made i.e. if you need a new page or are launching a new product etc. SEO is and should be additonal on a monthly contract or on an as needed basis).
5. Do you know how to use sitemaps and how to use analytics packages so I can track my visitors? (Again any hesitation politely say you will consider their proposal and quietly shuffle away.)

There are many more questions you can ask but ideally if they can answer all five and frazzle your mind with technical terms and ramble on endlessly about algorythms and the like, it probably is a great deal!

Your website is your shop window for the world to browse. Make it your crowning glory and make it work hard. Contact me for more information.