Web Development

A website can be the equivalent of your best employee, an astute business partner, or even a second location. It is an extension of your business that allows you to get new customers anytime anywhere, while removing the bottleneck of interacting with one lead at a time. Nevertheless, you get what you pay for.

Your website can just as easily deter a customer from doing business with you if it isn’t user-friendly. Without the proper tools in place your site will not provide you with any data at all; and, if your site is not properly maintained, it can stop a potential transaction in its tracks.

As a business owner, you are always looking for the most efficient way to conduct business and the most affordable way to build your infrastructure for this reason, it’s critical for you to consider these three factors before you invest in a high-quality website from a professional development company. You will find that this is what will best grow your business in the long term.

Reason 1: User Experience Design

Today, there are many cheap alternatives out there for building a website on a budget., If you’re just getting started in the business world, these entry level website options can be a great resource.

However for a business looking to invest in itself, building a website can be a lot like buying a suit off the rack will cost you far less money than its custom fit designer counterpart, and you may even get a bundle deal. The downside is that the off the rack suit will fit badly and look cheap (because it is) Most people who consider doing business with you will look you up online first, so it makes sense to put your best foot forward with a custom designed website. After all, are you more likely to do business with someone who looks sloppy and unorganized or someone who looks well put together, competent, and confident?

The design of your website should catch your customers’ eye, hold their attention, and draw them further into your website. You want them to immediately get a sense of who you are, what you’re about, and what sets you apart from the other companies they may be looking at online. As they are convinced to do business with you, it should be clear how to take the next step and easy for them to start that process. This part is crucial for success, if they find it difficult to start this process, it is extremely likely they will flow like water, down the path of least resistance to one of your competitors’ sites.

It is common for low cost website options to use a one size fits all approach to design in order to automate the process. This one size fits all approach automates their design process, and saves them time and money allowing for their lower price tag. The downsides to that approach are comparable to the downsides we outlined associated with a cheap suit,. Like a suit, your website should be tailored to fit you. Hiring a professional to custom design that customer experience for you, will ensure you avoid the pitfalls of confusion and provide a seamless customer experience online.

Reason 2: Admin Limitations

As we said before, your customer experience on your website will determine if they do business with you or your competitors., Your website should give you insight into the performance of that customer experience so that you can make informed decisions about how you can improve that experience and convert more leads.

Many low budget options for building websites are limited in what data they can offer you because they are missing the tools to monitor customer behavior on your site. What’s worse, is that even if they can give you that data, they are often limited in what you can do to improve the customer experience.

This is because they are boxed in with their one size fits all approach to design mentioned earlier. In order to achieve the efficiency of their automated design process, they have to limit what you can change about your site. They will have extremely rigid templates that are missing tools necessary for improving SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as well as basic layout editing options. These features could be used to improve user experience. A professional custom website will be built with SEO in mind, and always built with enough flexibility for ongoing changes.

Small budget Website options may also be limited in the transactional tools they offer. As a business owner, you no doubt use a number of softwares and tools to track your finances and process transactions. Low cost websites will likely not be equipped to integrate with your tools., As a result you may have to do more clerical work to transfer customer data from your website to your CRM and bookkeeping platforms.

A professional custom website site will come equipped to integrate with your business tools so that the data transfer is automated and seamless for you as the business owner. This adaptability alone can make it financially worth the upfront cost of a professionally designed website when compared to the long term cost of your time spent handling those tasks.

Reason 3: Support

Perhaps the biggest short fall of low budget website options is their low quality support teams. The fact is, that in order to compensate for lower price tags many of these companies outsource the support side of their business to companies where the support operator isn’t really an expert on the web platform they work with. The reason they aren’t true experts is because they didn’t build it.

While the one size fits all design approach of these platforms can make for a more standardized support system, it can also lead to a deprecation in experts with advanced knowledge on the platform. This means that if you run into an error that requires more than a simple solution, you may have to wait days or weeks for qualified help; days and weeks can be devastating to your business. Working with a custom web designer usually means you work directly with the team that built your site during the entire lifetime of your partnership, that is definitely the case at FineView Marketing.

Working with the team that built your site originally means that they have advanced knowledge of where a problem is likely coming from and can fix it much faster, also allows for adaptability as the fast changing world of online protocols continues to evolve. The Technology that runs the online world is constantly changing. Just as hardware like cellphone models become outdated and obsolete, the infrastructure of your digital assets will eventually become outdated unless they are properly maintained. Fostering a good working relationship with a reputable web design company from the early stages of your website is the best way to achieve this streamlined working relationship.

Investing in any asset can be a nervous endeavor, especially in the case of intangible digital assets. A solid digital foundation, in any case, can make or break your business. While the lowest cost options for web design such as bundle deals or do it yourself platforms may seem appealing in the short term, they will likely lead to missed advancement opportunities in the future.

Web Development: Takeaway

Think carefully before making a decision on this front, and consider the level of user experience, administrative freedom, and support you’d like to have with what is likely to be your leading avenue for new business. Budgeting is a crucial practice for any business owner, but remember, you get what you pay for.