Most businesses these days need a website in order to do business effectively and that means getting your own website, which in turn leads to questions about your web design and the designer you choose. Here are a few pointers to help you get the best and find someone that you will feel comfortable with and enjoy working with.
Your Web Design Must Appeal to Your Target Market
The first point about a good website is that it needs to appeal to your target market. When you think about your website, think about what your customers would like to see there - the pictures, colour schemes, etc. Do you want a professional lay out or a fun, funky layout for the younger generation? This will of course mean knowing who your target market is and what their tastes are so that you can develop a website that appeals to these tastes and meets their needs.
A Good Website should be Search Engine Optimized
I know people have differing ideas on this topic but as an internet marketer I can tell you that unless your website is properly search engine optimized you are going to lose a lot of traffic and that means a lot of business. Developing a properly search engine optimized website does not mean that it needs to detract from the appeal of your website and a good web design will balance attraction to the customer with properly optimized content.
Communicate Clearly
Many problems can be avoided by communicating clearly with your web designer and finding someone who also believes in communicating openly with you, their client. No one is a mind reader and in order to understand one another and ensure that you are both on the same page, you need to communicate regularly and specifically both about what you want and about what the web designer is doing.
Flexibility
Finding someone who is flexible enough to create what you want without enforcing their ideas on you is also important. You, after all, are the one that the website will be reflecting to your clients and you want a design that suits your business. They should understand this and work with you to achieve it.
Your Web Design should be 'Portable'
Some web designers design your website in such a way that they are the only one who knows what is going on and can maintain your website for you. This means more money for them but can be a huge frustration for you. Find out what your web designer feels about this and try to get them to do something that you can maintain yourself or that you could easily get another webmaster to maintain. A portable design is either very simply designed such that anyone with a basic understanding of web programming languages can work with it or it is clearly documented throughout so that all the new person needs to do is read through the comments in order to understand how the original designer was thinking in order to understand and maintain the site.
Finding the right person and together coming up with and working on a web design that will appeal to your target market and be properly search engine optimized is important for any business. Ultimately your website will reflect your business to your clients and so needs to be what you are looking for and create the impression you desire. The person you work with should understand this and should communicate clearly with you on how this process is going and make it easy for anyone to maintain once it is complete.
How Can a Website Help To Generate a Business
In the past few years the use of online marketing has become a cornerstone to the success of almost very business today. I could safely say, that if a business doesn't have a website or some kind of online presence, they are missing out on profits for their business. The market online is huge. To my surprise, after talking to many business owners i have discovered some businesses still do not have a website. In this situation, their competitors who are online are literally stealing the customers out of the market.
I was at a BBQ a while ago talking to a friend of mine who's a painting contractor. I asked him if he ever thought of getting a website, and looked at me like i had a second head growing out of my shoulder!
"How can a website help a business like mine? Who's going to look for painting contractors on the internet?", he said, like it was the most ridiculous suggestion in the world. (He is from the old school). I replied, " Actually, you would be amazed at what people look for on the internet."
Filled with curiosity, I had to do a bit of research and find out exactly how many people were searching for "local area painting contractors", and a few other related keywords. Sitting at the computer with burgers in one hand, i showed him that there was actually 895 people a month looking for a "local area painter" on Google.
"Okay, so let's just say that we built you a website which could secure you just 20 of those 895 people searching a month, as clients for your business". So we quickly did the math and found that over the course of a year, his average client was worth $970.
"Now if we get you 20 out of those 895 people a month (which is quite achievable) it would be an extra $19,000 per month". This is when he started to pay more attention. Over a year, that website would generate an extra $228,000 for his business. "I don't know anything about running a website, what would i have to do?", was his next question.
"You don't do anything except work out how you're going to handle the extra business".
Even after the initial investment of $4500 for the website, and $9600 yearly in SEO, maintenance and updates, he's still $213,900 richer.
What is it that made his website such a success? Direct response online marketing. I want you to have these direct response online marketing secrets (because they're awesome), which I'll share with you in my free ebook.
