Your website is often the first impression that a potential customer has of your brand. These days, people look online when they are searching for a product or service, and they will hopefully come across your website.
This is your chance to make a good first impression.
Your website is like your online business card, and a good website will make a great first impression and encourage people to find out more about your business—and hopefully end up buying your products and services.
A bad website will have the opposite effect, and it could end up hurting your brand image. For that reason, you want to make sure you get it right.
And that usually involves hiring a professional website design and development service.
Why Hire a Pro for Your Website?
There are many good reasons why you should always consider using a professional web design company for your business website.
First of all, you will end up with a more professional product. No matter how easy WordPress templates, and other website builders, make it to create a website without any design knowledge, the difference will be clear to your visitors.
Making the right first impression means coming across as a professional business. Trust is becoming increasingly important online, and a professional website is the first opportunity you have to start increasing trust in your brand, so don’t waste it.
You’ll also get a more original website. You don’t want to end up with the same website as hundreds of other businesses because that will only make you more invisible online.
A professional developer will create a website that is unique, one that stands out and presents an original brand image. This will make you more memorable and help you to stand out from your competition.
A pro website developer will also create you a website that gets found. SEO is a big area of online marketing, but it all starts with your website. You need your website to be coded correctly to optimize your site for search, and without this, you are facing an uphill battle.
Finally, hiring a professional will save you a lot of time. Creating a website yourself takes time, and then you will have to keep on updating it and fixing any problems that arise. A professional web developer will take these tasks off your hands, freeing you up to run your business.
How to Find the Right Expert
Once you’ve decided to hire a professional developer, you will need to choose one to work with, and there are many factors to consider here to find the right one.
Firstly, you will want to look at the websites that the developer has already created. This is the biggest indicator of their skills, so check out the sites and use them for yourself to see whether you like them. You might also want to read some customer testimonials to find out how good the experience was.
Rather than hiring a lone developer to create your site and then disappear, you might want to hire more of a full-service solution. For example, a company like Pronto Marketing can help to not only launch a professional web presence but also to maintain it. You could also take advantage of extra services to ensure your site is visible to the people who are looking for your products and services.
You should then call up a few developers and speak to them. Ask them some questions and get a feel for how they respond, and doing this will give you a good idea about their experience as well as how easy they are to work with.
Finally, consider the price. Don’t make the price the main factor, but always compare different options. When a developer charges a lot more, try to find you what you get for your money.
After you have looked at these factors, you will be in a better position to choose your web developer, and you’ll be one step closer to getting the professional website that you need for your business.
Make the Right First Impression with Your Website
You only get one chance to make a first impression, so make sure that is exactly what you do with your business website. Don’t launch a website that hurts your business by doing it yourself. It will only end up looking unprofessional and presenting the wrong image of your business.
Instead, hire a professional and get it right first time, then enjoy all the benefits that come with having a modern, stylish website.
About the author
Derek Brown is the Managing Director of Pronto Marketing, a provider of outsourced website design and Internet marketing services to small businesses around the world. Previously, Derek was the Director of Marketing Communications for the Mobile Devices Division at Microsoft Corp. and oversaw all marketing disciplines including advertising, branding, Internet marketing and public relations on global efforts.
