Content is King
To avoid website design scams you need to know the four types of web designers in this world who want you to think they know all about implmenting an effective inbound marketing strategy:
- The "purist" techy geeks that get all into the code and build everything from scratch and add all types of bells and whistles into every site they build.
- The "pretty" graphic artist types that make beautiful sites.
- The SEO-oriented designers that may or may not make an attractive site but it'll be found.
- The marketers who recognize the purpose of a site is to generate a lead and convert that lead to a sale.
Sure, being flashy and pretty can sometimes help make that happen, but not always and not necessarily.
And SEO always helps and I recommend it is done properly, but with a good list and/or an advertising / PPC / SEM budget you can drive traffic to any site.
But if your site does not have the key components of persuasion an lead capture you are just wasting your money. That's why most website designers tell you
...CONTENT IS EXTRA...and we don't do it."
You see, learning the mechanics of Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop or Dreamweaver or Wordpress is easy. Get a book or watch some online tutorials and start making logos and images and creating websites and ask your friends and family members what they think.
But testing lead capture and conversion is hard because most web/graphic designers HATE sales and marketing and even more of them CANNOT WRITE!
And despite what the Johnny-come-lately-social-media-140-character gurus on the mountain tops tell you,..
CONTENT IS, AND FOREVER WILL BE, KING!!! Content is what the search engines index.
Content is what your prospects read to make a decision as to whether or not to do business with you!
If your potential web designer misspells their OWN information on their own website, how good of a job do you think they will do for you?
Note: Check out the actual code below copied and pasted from a real web company near me in SoCal that charges $7,000 or more to build a custom site (this makes you married in web terms) that you have only partial control over, cannot edit on a Mac, and will have no content other than what you send them because "content is extra."
<title>Online Search Marketing | Custom Web Design & Development | Crazy Company</title> <meta name="Keywords" content="online search marketing, custom web design, custom web development, Crazy Company, Crazy Company Interactive, Crazy Ripoff Company LLC" /> <meta name="Description" content="Crazy Company is your web expert specializing in online search marketing, custom web design & custom web development. Our proven solutions are everything you need to grow your business online. From intuitive, results driven web design & web development to online marketing (SEO & PPC Management) to CMS web hosting & dedicated server web hosting to advanced ecommerce and web applications." /> <meta name="Author" content="Design, development, & hosted content management by: Crazy company. Visit stupidcompany.com for more informaiton on web design, web development, & hosted content management solutions." />
Mind you now, if they swipe $7,000 from your bank account, your keywords and description will be empty but they'll have their Crazy Ripoff Company name, description and URL embedded in the Author section of your code with at least seven (7) references to themselves.
Why?
Because you won't know any better and THEY want to be found and indexed on the internet. They understand SEO and code and this helps them piggy back on your website to get more clients and they understand that building a list is the secret weapon of online marketing.
Do you want your web designer keeping you in the dark and sneaking their name and links and promotional information in because you don't know they're riding your coattails on your site that you paid good money for?
"Caveat Emptor" is NOT how to run a business in today's interconnected, social media world.
When all is said and done your website must be pleasing to look at, easy to navigate, chock full of relevant content and structured "behind the scenes" from a programming standpoint that the search engines can find you when a human being does a search for answers to the problems they face.
And for 97.8925% of you business owners and entrepreneurs reading this, you can build a great converting website for less than $7,000 on an open-source platform that you will own and be able to edit forever...with no mispellings, misspelings, typos.
