The Top Ten Costly Mistakes Business’s Make when Choosing a Web Designer
How You can Safeguard Yourself and Your Business from Getting Ripped off when Setting up or Re-Designing your Website.
An educational service provided by Webarena
Dear Business owner,
Consumers are beginning to put more and more trust in doing business and making transactions online. For many businesses, their online “shopfront” is the only public face their business has, so it makes sense to ensure you get it right the first time when designing your website, and ensure you don’t make silly mistakes that could severely compromise:
- Your business
- Your reputation
- Your existing client base
- Your prospective client base
- Security
- Your bank balance
Your website should improve public perception of your company. Just as you would expect your customers to be turned off by a poorly dressed, unkempt and messy door-to-door salesperson, the same goes for your website. Statistics show that it takes the average web-user less than 2 seconds to decide whether to stay put on a website or navigate away.
A clean, engaging and relevant website is essential in today’s business world. After you’ve read this report you should be confident that you understand the blunders to be avoided when choosing a designer to oversee the development or redevelopment of your online business shopfront.
In this special report we will cover the Top Ten Mistakes businesses and individuals most commonly make when setting up their website, or making changes to an existing website. The errors outlined here take into account common issues with choosing a web designer and website format, and why these decisions can mean the difference between investing in your business and gambling on its future livelihood. The expertise used to compile this report is derived from the successful website design and marketing firm, Webarena – www.webarena.com.au.
The company is dedicated to ensuring their client’s websites are “living” and evolving online extensions of their businesses. In this report Webarena divulge the TOP TEN mistakes they have seen many people make when designing or re-developing their website. After you have read this report, you’ll know exactly what to ask your prospective web developer to avoid making mistakes you could live to regret.
The Top Ten Mistakes People make when Choosing a Web Designer
1. Taking a leap of faith without knowing what you’re getting
2. Communication break down
3. Choosing a Web Company that takes months and months to complete your site
4. Choosing a website that will technically be out of date in 6 months
5. Having to pay a fortune for minor changes to your site
6. Having a site that no one in your company can make changes to
7. Not testing the sites functionality before purchasing
8. Beware the SEO Vultures!
9. Having boring or un compelling content on your site
10. Choosing a company with poor back up service
1. Taking a leap of faith without knowing what you’re getting
The issue with being a non-web developer is that when you pay someone else to design your website, the finished product is somewhat of an illusion in your mind to begin with. As a web design customer, you don’t really know what you’re going to get, and most worryingly, you also don’t know if it’s going to function the way in which you require it to.
This is known as the leap of faith mistake commonly made by web design clients who place “god-like” faith in web designers and developers, and often pay them way too much money to produce their website without being clear on what they are getting.
Every business should do their due diligence to ensure the web development company has the expertise to create the type of website you require. To help you through the difficult stage of choosing, make sure you take a look at the company’s portfolio and ask to use a demonstration system of their websites functionality. If you require a site with a sophisticated e-commerce facility or interactive features, ensure the company has had experience developing similar products for other customers.
To avoid the leap of faith factor it’s often a good idea to ask friends and associates who assisted them with their website and if they were happy with the service. Word-of-mouth is the most powerful advertisement around and your friends and colleagues are likely to be honest enough to help you to weed out the web design cowboys too.
2. Communication break down
Once you’ve decided on a web designer to create your website masterpiece, your toughest assignment is communicating to them EXACTLY what you want. YOU are the expert on your own business needs, and your designer needs as much information as possible about what YOU require from YOUR site.
Consider firstly:
- Do you need interactive features?
- What type of pay-point system do your customers required?
- How should your products be presented?
- What is your target market?
- What is your edge over your competitors?
Before you even approach a design company to look after your website ensure you know exactly what you’re looking for.
Do some research and check out the websites of your competitors.
What would set your website apart?
Always approach your web design or development team with a firm idea of your requirements – listen to their advice – but never go in blind.
3. Choosing a Web Design Company that takes months and months to complete your site
This mistake has a lot to do with our leap of faith issues in Number 1. One mistake businesses make is not agreeing on clear timelines for web designers to stick to in order to have the website completed and live. Webarena suggest that the average website development will take about 8-12 weeks. The approach should be systematic with various signoffs at key points of development If you go with a web designer who doesn’t do this, you could wait 3 months to find yourself presented with a completely useless website that needs a total overhaul in order to be relevant to your
business needs.
This makes the whole process easier for you as the client, and for the designer, because if they are on the wrong track with something it is easier to make changes as they go along rather than attempt to completely re-design a website that totally missed the mark.
4. Choosing a website that will technically be out of date in 6 months
Some web designers attempt to lock their unknowing clients into buying website products based on old technology that will mean the entire site is up for complete renewal in 1-2 years. Demand a designer that is keeping pace with technology.
We all know that the computing world moves ahead at an alarming rate, but you should expect that your web designer keeps up to speed with these changes, and integrates useful and up-to-date technology into your website. To make sure you don’t get tricked here, you may have to do a bit of research yourself, especially if you’re not particularly “website savvy”.
Find out what the latest website design and coding initiatives are – how will these technological advances assist you to further your business online? Remember, technological changes affect not only the cosmetic look of your website, but the “back of house” and security aspects as well. Websites with up-to-the-minute hosting technology can assist you to provide the best possible services for your clients – especially if your website completes a high volume of transactions and you need to protect the security of your clients.Ensure you put some serious thought into the technologies your site requires -making it useful in the long-term.
Paying $20,000 for a website that needs re-coding and designing within 2-3 years is NOT a sound business investment.
5. Having to pay a fortune for minor changes to your site
Another common mistake made by businesses is choosing a web designer who charges a fortune to make minimal changes for you.
Most business owners don’t have the time or the know-how to learn all that is involved in using complex amd difficult content management systems (CMS) to update their own website. This is a pretty difficult task unless you have a dedicated web design team or IT development guru in-house. Be wary of developers who charge hefty fees for every little tweak you want to make to the site. Find out upfront, before you hire the team to develop your site, exactly how the content management system works.
What will it cost when it’s time to make changes to pricing, address details or company structure graphs?
Is there a CMS which allows you to make smaller changes yourself if your business has the capacity?
Make sure you’re not wasting money falling for the typical tricks of web designers looking to exploit your perceived naivety.
6. Having a site that no one in your company can make changes to
Speaking of content management systems (CMS) – if you agree with a web designer to set up a CMS that you can manipulate yourself when you need to make simple changes, ensure the system is easy to use without hours of training.
If you have product details that you wish to make changes to yourself, ensure the CMS is workable for you or your staff members.
Web designers and developers who offer you no options when it comes to CMS probably want to ensure you are reliant on them for making even the most minimal changes to the website, which they will no doubt charge you a premium rate to complete.
7. Not testing the sites functionality before purchasing
Some web development companies, like Webarena, actually offer their prospective customers the chance to “road test” the CMS that comes with the site before you begin the website project. This is a great way to ensure you’re choosing the right designer who can produce a website that will suit your needs for years to come. Seek out a company which allow you to try their systems and familiarise yourself with the user friendliness of their products before you choose to move forward.
Look out for the companies who are evasive when you ask them for a CMS test run or want more information about the website workings or to trial a product before you commit to it for your own business. They
are probably trying to hide something.
8. Beware the SEO Vultures!
In recent history, ethical web design companies, have had difficulty convincing small businesses of the enormous potential that high search placement can provide, but that’s changing fast. One of our quickest areas of incremental revenue growth is Search Engine Optimisation. Not only are small businesses starting to see the necessity of Websites that they can easily update and manage themselves but the importance of bringing hundreds if not thousands of new, highly targeted potential customers to their website every day. One downside to the increase in interest in SEO is the emergence of ‘SEO Vultures’, those that prey on the unknowing and often promising the world and delivering very little to their new SEO clients.
In one instance, an existing client of Webarena came to our offices to discuss some alterations that he wanted to be made to his website. While he was waiting our SEO expert began talking about how his website was performing and if he was happy with the current level of new leads it was generating.
This is when he told informed us that ‘Google’, called him the previous week and offered him the top position in their search listings for his given keyword for a small monthly fee of $350. Of course it was in fact not Google calling him, and more likely a shady SEO firm looking to extract some money from an unsuspecting website owner. The website owner was elated to have the opportunity to purchase such a high ranking position within the Google search results, but wanted to check with his website designers prior to taking any action.
Luckily enough for the client they had not made a financial commitment to ‘Google’, and we were able to offer him a realistic SEO plan to achieve his goals. All small business owners should be made aware that Google will never offer you a position within their natural search results, and furthermore, no one, regardless of their skill can guarantee you position 1 for any keyword. Those who do, are deceiving you and are just after your money.
9. Having boring or un-compelling content on your site
So you need a professional web developer and designer to put together your website, right? But you’re keen to write the wording on your own to save you some money? Tread carefully here. Content is the key to making your website sink or swim in the eyes of your clients. There is little point putting together a top-notch, technologically advanced website that is riddled with clumsy language, spelling mistakes and mis-represented marketing-spiel. Consider having a professional writer put together your content. On the whole, the costs of buying content are minimal when compared with designing your website, and once you have decent content in place it’s really easy to update in a similar vain. If your web designer offers a content writing service ensure you know what you’re paying for.
Is the content writer a verified writer?
Are they making sure your site is optimised to ensure the biggest number of your clients can find you online.
Ask to see examples of their writing work.
10. Choosing a company with poor back up service
We have learnt a lot about the mistakes you need to avoid when choosing a designer to develop or re-develop your website, but don’t forget the golden rule – customer service. Ask your web designer if they have a support department, during the development of your website and more importantly AFTER it has been made live. Many web design companies aren’t structured to handle customers after the website has been delivered leaving you, the customer, with little or no support.
