Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.
From time to time everyone makes mistakes. And I know I’ve made my fair share. But your website doesn’t need to be another bad decision. Hiring a professional website designer and developer will save yourself time, money, and a lot of headaches. Here are 3 mistakes that will save you a lot of trouble when looking upgrade your web presence.
A 5 page website seemed like a great deal
Don’t be fooled by this classic marketing trick. Now I’m not saying you can’t have a beautiful 5 page website, but do you really want a site that is limited to only 5 pages? Website designers offer great prices on 5 page websites but when considering your website, you need to think of the future. Think of your website as a marketing tool. Do your other marketing efforts stay the same or do they change with time?
Generating traffic to a website that may only contain a few images and paragraphs of text is going to be very difficult. Working for marketing and search engine optimization companies tought me many things. The first question when starting a search engine optimization campaign is “when did you last update your website?”. Search engines are looking for active websites. A website that is never updated, potentially has little to nothing to offer users and will not be indexed well in search engines.
I got a great price on an outsourced website
I hear this way too many times. And the outcome is usually the same, horrible. I’ve worked on many websites that were originally outsourced and they all had a few things in common.
1. Bad coding
Not only have I found most websites that were outsourced to have basic html errors, but I’ve seen websites that were done using tables and with multiple php errors. You don’t want a website that is full of errors. It makes you look unprofessional. You are basically representing your business with errors. Do you want that?
2. Communication barriers
How can you communicate your needs when you can’t understand or speak the language of the company you are working with? Communication is key in any business, especially in website design and development.
3. Time constraints
Not only will it be difficult to communicate if there are linguistic, but how can you communicate with a company that is half way around the world? Are you going to be willing to after a long day spend even more time at home working on your business website?
Paid advertising
While this isn’t a huge mistake, in my opinion, unless you have a huge budget to spend, paid advertising is a waste. You will get a lot of traffic from paid advertising, but once you are done paying for the advertisements, your traffic will drop off immediately. Organic search engine optimization is the way to go. You can achieve organic search engine optimization results by keeping your content fresh and giving your users something they can use. Blogging is one of the best ways to establish credentials as a professional in your field.
