Before I even post this I already fear the backlash from all you talented web designers out there. Give me a chance to explain though before you arrive at our offices with pitchforks!

I’m not challenging the great work of web designers here – especially not the ones that work at Brinn Marketing!

What I’m more challenging is the steps that many businesses take when it comes to building a new website. That is usually just one step – ‘best call a web designer’

9 times out of 10 what do you get when you ask a web designer to build you a website? A website… sounds obvious right? You get a website and if you pick the right web designer you’ll also get a website that looks great. It’s more what you don’t get that makes all the difference between success online and failure though.

It is the job of the web designer you take on to design and, usually build, your website. If you run a small-to-medium sized business that doesn’t have the luxury of your own marketing department to create your online offering, the chances are you’ll be telling the designer what you want the site to look like and do. You’ll then get a website very much inline with what you had in mind…

WHAT”S THE PROBLEM THEN?!

The problem is that what you had in mind wasn’t necessarily an online presence that would do anything more than be a nice brochure for your company. Sure, it will tell potential customers about your business but it won’t do much else and will they even find it?

Firstly, if you’re looking to just create the kind of site described above then you don’t need to pay a web designer to do it. The technology is there to be able to do-it-yourself. With the 30-day free trial of our Framework platform we will let you create your site on your own selecting from over 100 templates for completely free and only a very small ongoing monthly charge for hosting.  That’s not really the point though.

Today, a website is not enough – websites are dead! It’s a given that any business has a website but it’s the ones that invest the time and effort in creating something great that reap the benefits.

What you need to create is an online business. Your online presence should sit at the very centre of your businesses marketing efforts regardless of what line of work you’re in. Remember, the first thing 99% of people do when looking for products or services is search online first – so you need to be well represented.

HERE’S SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT:

You have your new website but how are potential customers going to find it? Is your site built with SEO in mind and do you have other planned marketing activity to drive traffic to your website?

Once you get potential customers to your website how are you engaging them, does your site have interactive elements and do you have effective calls-to-action to make them take that next step?

What happens once a customer takes that first step on your website? Do you have a plan in place to continue the process seamlessly?

A website needs to be dynamic and constantly changing. Do you have the ability to add to and improve on your website on an ongoing basis? Do you have a software system to allow you to manage your site easily and cost-effectively?

Is your site a side thought or is it an intrinsic part of everything else you do to market your business?

CAN’T A WEB DESIGNER DO ALL THIS?

If you find one that can then let me know his details so I can employ him/her to replace our whole team (including myself)! A web designer’s job is to design your site - create a look and feel and build it into a functioning site. Hopefully what I have demonstrated is that really that is only one, all be it vital part, of a much bigger jigsaw puzzle. By just employing a freelance web designer what you will get is a website – not an online business.

There are actually a vast amount of skills required to create a worthwhile, revenue generating online presence. Actually, a lot of it is about marketing expertise, planning and effective ongoing management.

This all sounds expensive but it doesn’t have to be. There are many companies, including ourselves, that offer this full marketing service at a fixed monthly cost and it needn’t cost the world.

Really this is about starting thinking about your online presence as an ongoing, constantly evolving asset and finding the right partner company to work with to achieve this.

I’ll leave you to get searching to find one then– hopefully you’ll end up back here in the end though…

WANT MORE INFO?
Watch the Framework video: