QUESTION:
Do I have to build and maintain my own business website myself, or pay someone else to do the work for me? - Wesley L.
ANSWER:
If you say, pay someone else to do the work for you, Wesley, I will assume that you are talking about hiring a professional website designer to do the work and not your neighbor's young son. If my assumptions are true, keep reading. If not, go ahead and scroll to the comedy section. You will not find the best advice I can give you, so you can contact Dilbert for your hot business tips.
Should you build and maintain your own business website, or pay someone to do it for you? Let me answer your question with a few of my own. First: is building and maintaining Web sites the focus of your business? Second: you can spend your time better doing the more important things like, oh, I don't know, I mean running your business? If your answers were incorrect and yes, respectively, you do not have to build a business and maintain a website.
Remember this: every minute you spend on activities that are not related to your business's main focus is time spent hurting your business. In other words, every minute you spend focusing on activities that do not contribute to the growth of your business and thus increasing your bottom line is a waste of time.
If you want to be a web designer, be a web designer. However, if your business is focused on building widgets, it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that your time can be better spent building widgets, not websites.
Example: I once was asked by a wealthy dentist to teach him how to take care of his Web site so that he would not pay me to do it. Now, my teeth had helped to teach this boy's kids in college, but that didn't seem to matter. At the time, he was more concerned about paying for changes to his site than with my oral hygiene. Honestly, I said, I would love to teach you how to update your Internet site, as soon as you teach me to brush my teeth, so I don’t pay you to do that. He got the point. He also charged me enough money to clean his site and review it for months. A wise man.
Many business owners think that they cannot afford a well-designed website, and that is not true. Although the old adage, “you get what you pay for” is less true than it used to be when building a website, having a professional web designer do the work for you is a good investment. A well-designed website can bring you double the return on your investment. You can't say that with too many collateral.
While it is best to leave the design and maintenance of the site to a professional, it is up to you (or someone considered to be the media specialist in your company) to provide the designer with content (text and images) that best conveys your company's message. To your customers. A website, no matter how well-designed, means nothing if it lacks the content needed to attract customers to the products you sell or the services you provide.
Here are a few questions that will, once answered, ensure that the message of your site is attractive in the way it is structured. Review these points with the designer before the design process begins, as the answers will help determine which course your website design should take.
What Is the Purpose of Your Website?
Many business sites have two purposes: (1) to educate consumers and, (2) to sell them products or services. For example, when you sell shoes, the purpose of your website is to educate potential customers about the quality and durability of your shoes and, as a result, to sell them. When you paint houses, the purpose of your site is to teach homeowners why your services are superior to other painters and sell them to renters to paint their house. By defining the purpose of your website, you will provide the designer with the information needed to build a website that conveys that purpose to the intended audience.
Who Are My Audience?
Your target audience includes the people you want to attract to your site: potential customers now, future and current employees, potential investors, etc. Anyone who may be interested in your company and its products or services is a member of the intended recipient. The audience. Properly identifying your audience is important as your website should be specially designed to attract your audience.
Put them on their shoes (or in front of their computers). Visualize your website. If you were visiting a site like yours, what would you expect to find, and what would you be disappointed with if you did not find it? Identify your audience, and make your website designed to meet their needs and exceed their expectations.
What content should be included on my website?
The content of your website should be driven by the nature of your business. If you are a real estate agent, your site should have images of real estate that you own for sale, as well as information on buying and selling a home. If you are a car dealer, your site may have images before and after the cars you have repaired. Remember to specify the purpose of your site, and then develop the content to achieve that purpose.
What Is My Competition Doing?
The last question you need to ask is one of the most important: What do you do for your competition on the web? Search Google for similar businesses and click on their websites. How are their sites designed? What message are they trying to convey? Do they do a good job of transmitting that message and, as a result, sell the product? What do you like about their websites? What do you dislike? Identify your likes and dislikes, and share your findings with your site designer.
Remember, you are not stealing trade secrets here.
You just borrow ideas.
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