Do I Need a Website?
It is incredibly difficult for a business in this day and age to succeed without having a good website. Customers expect to be able to find you online, see your hours and find ways to contact you. When your customers lack information; they are confused, frustrated and are inclined to look elsewhere.
Why have a website?
Having an updated, easy to navigate website makes a huge difference. It doesn't need to be fancy but it does need to easily present the basic information about your business. It can be tempting to make the website yourself or perhaps ask a family member to create it for you. However, you will save yourself a lot of trouble in the long run if you hire a professional from the beginning. It is similar to building a house. If the foundation isn't done correctly, everything else will slowly fall apart and have problems. Having a bad website will frustrate your customers and will be worse than not having a site at all! [bctt tweet="Customers expect to be able to find you online, see your hours and find ways to contact you. When your customers lack information; they are confused, frustrated and are inclined to look elsewhere." username="brightdigit"]
What can you do next?
There are three things you can do to better understand your website:
Do What The Best Sites Do
Look at the sites of other businesses similar to yours and copy what they do best. Make sure not to be overwhelmed and look at the most important pieces.
Be The Customer
Pretend to be a customer of your business. What do you like? What do you not like? Is anything frustrating? Is anything easy? Once you start to get a sense of these things, I am sure you will begin to recognize how your site can be improved.
Talk To Your Market
Ask yourself, how would a customer would try to find your business? If they found your site, would they easily find what they need? Or is there room for improvement? Once you've asked these questions and have done some research, the next step is finding someone to do it. [bctt tweet="If the foundation isn't done correctly, everything else will slowly fall apart and have problems. Having a bad website will frustrate your customers and will be worse than not having a site at all!" username="brightdigit"]
Finding the Right Web Designer
The easiest way to find the right designer is ask for recommendations. Here are few people who could help:
- If you see a site you like, find out who built it.
- Ask other business owners for recommendations. Most business owners will be more than willing to help.
- Talk to family and friends. They may use a great service or know someone who does.
Once you have a good set of references (and their references as well), think about your expectations and start inquiring about quotes. And remember keep your site simple for the first version or a redesign because you can always add more content later.
Getting a Web Site the Right Way
- You can build your own website but **you may not have the time to upkeep it yourself.**
- Asking a friend or relative to do it for cheap could result in website that is **unable to be maintained or could be a poor foundation for the future**.
- When looking for the right web designer, be sure to **ask around among business owner especially those with high quality web sites.**
- Finally, keep the first version of your site simple. Then build content on top of it in the future.
Good luck with this new and exciting endeavor! If you have any questions, you can always contact us.