Searching for a Web Development Company: What to Ask, What to Know, What to Watch Out For

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Searching for a Web Development Company: What to Ask, What to Know, What to Watch Out For

 

We truly live in an amazing time. Now all it takes is a good idea, a little drive and a break and bam… you have a business. In the excitement of building a company out of their basement, their garage, their man-cave, entrepreneurs are often blinded to those who would take advantage of their enthusiasm.

If I only had a website!

So what is the entrepreneur to do. He starts to put together his first attempt at a Word Press site but after hours of frustration he turns for help.

ACT NOW AND WE’LL BUILD YOU A SITE FOR LESS THAN $8,000!!!

Hmmm, the entrepreneur says to himself. I guess that’s just how much it costs. But wait there’s more…

HURRY TO LOCK IN THAT $8,000 PRICE TAG AND YOUR WEBSITE RENTAL (of $400/month) WILL BE WAIVED FOR THE FIRST 30 DAYS!!!!!!!*with a 36 month agreement, notification must be given 42 weeks out to cancel, cancelation rates apply

Ohhh, I have to rent it? I guess I must have to rent it.

And there it is…he’s trapped.

Whenever you are shopping for a website here are a few questions to ask:

  1. Will I own the site?
  2. Who pays for domain hosting?
  3. Are there any additional fees associated with the build

Website developers are extremely talented people; and extremely talented people deserve to be compensated for their time/experience/knowledge/etc. The total price tag for the deal mentioned above was as follows:

$8,000 – initial build

+ $14,000 – monthly fees (thanks for that free first month!)

$22,000

Now, there are plenty of sites that are worth $22,000, some that are two, three, five times that in value. Buying a website is an investment in your company, not an expense. You should expect to see a return on that investment. Ask your developer this one simple question: “How will this site help me drive revenue?”

A web developer is a partner and should be as dedicated to growing your company are you are.

If it feels like you are negotiating to buy a used car, you’re probably talking to a used car salesman.

 

The Need for Mobile Responsiveness

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It is nice to see that all the hype and buzz has died down a little bit about “Mobile-gedon” and all the terrible things that were going to happen as a result of Google updating its algorithm this past spring. It seems like marketing news is as bad as the regular news these days: focus more on fear mongering and not what is actually happening in the industry. Now that everyone has realized the world keeps turning even with algorithm updates we should probably take a deeper look into why it wasn’t all that bad.

First off, there are more pople than ever using the search engines on their mobile devices. And all these people looking for information and products on their smart phones and tablets want a website that caters to them. So when they land on a website that is not mobile optimized and they cannot read the text they are going to hit the back button and go somewhere else. This is bad for the business with the website that just lost a customer but also bad for the search engines because it means they did not give the user what they were looking for. Naturally, this was going to get added into their algorithm so that they would be able to deliver a better result for their users.

The real problem with the scare tactics of the marketing media is that everyone was worried the wrong thing. Everyone that is involved in digital marketing knows that conversions are a massive part of the equation for success.   If you are losing visitors because your site is not mobile optimized there should have been a reaction long before Google decided to change its algorithm. This is nothing more than a reflection of the true problem with the current state of online marketing, Vanity, and the lack of understanding by so many businesses that are hiring companies to get them to page 1 instead of hiring them to help get more sales. People are clearly more worried about getting to #1 in Google than increasing their revenue. These are not mutually exclusive, obviously a higher ranking will result in greater traffic and should result in greater sales. The problem is that people are only focused on the metric that is easy to see.

Please do not think that we are saying not to worry about your current SEO strategy or to discount search rankings. We are just saying that there is more to marketing that ranking. The next time you take a look at your sites metrics take a minute to figure out what your conversion rates are. If you need help with this or a couple of simple tricks you can do to help with tracking feel free to call the Alan Morgan Group at (866) 805-3494 and one of our partners will be happy to walk you through your options.