The majority of businesses today acknowledge the need for an online presence. More and more shoppers are turning to the Internet to research products and services, gather information, and make purchases.
Neglecting your website alienates this important consumer audience.
While many businesses concede that a website is necessary, they attempt to get an online presence for the least amount of money possible. This mistake often costs a business more money and lost business in the long run.
Online business is a different animal than traditional advertising. Competition is fierce and online consumers have a different set of expectations than traditional shoppers. They expect condensed, relevant information, in an appealing format that is easy to read and easy to navigate. If they visit and website and find any of these areas lacking, they are likely to click away to a competitor’s website for their purchase.
For these reasons, professional website design is a wise investment. A skilled professional website designer can create:
- Visually appealing website layouts and graphics
- Easy to navigate layouts
- And a professional image for business
In addition, many professional designers either offer in-house content creation, or they out source to a reliable SEO copywriter to create targeted, condensed, and relevant content for the company’s website. This professional element can make all the difference in the online success of a business since consumers generally use search engines to find the products and services they are looking for.
Today’s businesses need an online presence that is professional, tailored for online consumer shopping habits, and crafted to be search engine and user friendly.
Professionally designed websites are a wise investment of resources for any industry and are essential for online success.
I couldn’t agree more (though I’m a little biased). I’ve had a lot of companies choose the cheaper alternative and the come back to me a few months later to fix their broken website.
There’s a reason why we charge money for web design. We do it for a living and we’ve spent thousands of hours studying, learning, comparing and optimzing.
This is very true. And it is disturbing how many business owners I run into who ask for a website, that is complex, for very cheap.
Often after I give a quote or statement of work a client comes back and suggests a lower price, usually saying that they have a family member or neighbor (usually a kid, mind you) that can do the site for cheap. They undervalue quality work and specialization. There is a lot of time and effort put into it. And, in the end, you should get what you pay for. Seems like half of a web designer / developer’s job is educating the client.
I think this brings up the question, whether or not professional looking has to be expensive. I completely agree that complex websites should be expensive. Lots of pages and all sorts of fancy stuff adds up. But if you just need a simple 1-page site that looks professional, then it’s a different story.
That’s why I built Clearly Local. Most local businesses don’t need a big fancy website. All they need is 1 professional looking page with their information on it. And that simplicity scales the price down quite a bit.