11 November 2011
Careful who you choose to design your website, sometimes you can end up with a site that is detrimental to your business rather then shows it off.

So Called Websites

I’ve recently been spending time looking at other peoples websites, it is quite amazing what some businesses deem a website, and wonder how this has (or even if) it has been designed.
Whilst I won’t mention any names, there are clearly some web design companies whom are preying on unsuspecting businesses, whom are not computer literate, probably don’t have any clue about the internet either. These so called web design companies are taking their money and leaving their clients with very poor one or 2 page sites.
Trouble is the client has purchased the domain name, it usually relates directly to their business name and they don’t have any idea how to develop their business on-line. I think it is fair to say most web designers set the site up and leave their client to stumble along, charging the earth for simple updates. I know there are some web designers whom look after their clients, after all a web site is probably going to become a businesses main marketing tool. It is vital that the website has been designed so it can actively be updated as the business grows.
Ask yourself this question:
What is a website for?
In most cases, particularly in relation to SME’s it is to showcase what a business does and are they any good at it. Let’s take a builder as an example, if I was the end client, what would I want to see in a website:

Are they local?

Do they do what I need?

Are they any good at it?

How do I contact them?

(price is of course very important, but a website isn’t always the best place to reveal this)

The most important one of these in my opinion is “are they any good at it?” Testimonials are oh so important, what have previous clients said about their service and quality.
So returning to the main point, there are many so called “websites” that do nothing of the sort, they are merely contact points, often with a generic message of what they offer, flowered up with useless information. In the case of a hairdresser’s site I saw recently, it talked of the importance of how the hair clippers were held by the technician – quite frankly who cares, it’s not important to the potential client.
There are so many businesses who believe they are stuck with websites that are detrimental to their business rather than showcasing them. It’s up to us, local web designers to educate our local businesses that using some of these unnamed services are pointless and in fact detrimental to their business.