Looking for someone to help with your website design in Fort Collins? Maybe you’re needing a one-man shop to make a small website or maybe you’re needing an experienced agency to develop a full-blow web application. Regardless of which type, many small businesses have been burned by website designers. Hopefully this blog post can help in your search for a website design in Fort Collins.
I’m not saying that the web designers were doing anything malicious or that they were even intentionally harming their clients, but nonetheless, more than 96% of all websites are lost in cyberspace. This mind-blowing number is hard to even comprehend. That’s more than 1 billion web pages that are floating around in cyberspace, having never been read. Can you imagine how much money has been wasted on website design?
If you’re like most small businesses in Fort Collins, you know the power of the Web and you know that your website has to be at the center of your marketing efforts. But how do you choose a website designer in Fort Collins and be assured that you’re not hiring one of the many who unintentionally create sites that are destined to be lost in cyberspace? The answer is, do your homework. Ask the right questions when you’re interviewing. Find out what you need to know before you get your website design in Fort Collins.
Here are some things to consider before hiring just any website designer in Fort Collins:
What’s involved in your particular job? Does the person or firm your interviewing have experience with similar projects? For instance, are you wanting to have a simple shopping cart or are you wanting to have a complete inventory management system that will automate your retail business from ordering to shipping? Are you needing something that will serve just Fort Collins customers or are you needing to sell your products to people around the globe? If you’re needing more than a simple site, then finding someone with previous experience with similar projects can be priceless. It can mean faster turn-around, low costs and overall better performance.
Has the firm you’re talking with promoted other sites to the top of Google? What’s their philosophy concerning SEO? Or do they even know what that means? I know that some of the larger agencies in Fort Collins will openly admit that Search Engine Optimization isn’t important. If you agree that your site doesn’t need to be found on Google, then you might have a good fit. From experience, I can count on one hand the number of web design companies in Fort Collins that understand search engine optimization and recognize the value of top placement on Google.
How long have they been in business? Web design in Fort Collins, like most other industries, has been impacted by the economy. The fact is, newer companies are statistically far more susceptible to the downturn in the economy. It’s a given, more than 98% of all small businesses will go under before their 5-year anniversary. If you choose to go with a company without an established client base, you may be saving a little money, but you may also be risking that they will close their doors leaving you high and dry without a site.
This risk is very real today. Just 3 weeks ago, a web design company in Fort Collins shut down, leaving their clients running scared. I know, because we helped to bail some of them out. They were left with 24-hour notice that their sites we’re no longer being supported and would be offline within 2 weeks. Yikes! What if your business depended on your website for income? People were freaking out. We rescued one site that would have spelled disaster for the business owner had it gone down. Unfortunately for all of those customers, the transition was difficult and was an unneeded headache and added cost at a time when they need to be focusing on their businesses rather than paying attention to something that they thought was taken care of.
Are they able to get traffic to their own site? Of the 80 web design companies in the Fort Collins area, the majority of them have sites that are lost in cyberspace themselves. So that begs the question, if they can’t get traffic to their own site, how can they do it for you? Sure, you’ll hear that they get their business from referrals. That may be an indication that their clients enjoyed working with them. Maybe they’re nice folks, but how on earth can they drive large amounts of traffic to your site, if they can’t drive traffic to their own site? Afterall, if your business thrived on referrals alone, you wouldn’t be looking for a new website designer in Fort Collins. The fact is, you want more leads and more sales so you’d better scour Fort Collins to find a website design company that knows their stuff.
If you’d like to grill us and put our feet to the fire, we welcome the opportunity. We’d love to talk shop and get to know you. We guarantee the time spent will be eye-opening and will aid you in your search for a website design company in Fort Collins. There’s never any pressure. Just honest conversation to see if there’s a good fit. Please call us today at 674-0079.
Chadd Bryant