Do I need a professional web site design?
At some point, anyone with a small business asks themselves this question.
If you are looking on this site, there is a good chance you have asked this question already. Of
course my answer is that you probably do need one. I have seen some instant successes in web sites over
the past few years, and I personally think that anyone who doesn't investigate the e-commerce options that
they have on the Internet is missing out on a valuable opportunity.
In the market for small farms and breeders, I was initial skeptical about the prospects of selling
livestock through the Internet. In the past couple of years, I have learned otherwise. The Internet is
a great marketplace for all kinds of things. In the case of goats, I would have thought that the market
was more local, but on several of the web sites I have designed, the owners have sold goats and livestock
guardian dogs to people over a thousand miles away.
I have spent a lot of time looking at web sites which promote goats and dogs, and I have learned
a few things. First, poorly designed sites (including a lot of do it yourself sites), are often not indexed
properly in search engines, and have a difficult time ever getting visitors from search engine results.
Secondly, even when people get to a poorly designed site, odds are they will go back to their search results
and find a better designed site.
So, when you are looking for a web designer, you want someone who is going to make a professionally
designed site that can be indexed in the search engines.
You also want a designer who has a maintenance plan that includes building your pages up to a good
sized site. My recommendation has always been that adding content to a web site is the number one way to
get visitors to a site (mainly through search engine credibility). A good goal is to add at least 2 pages
per month (which equates to 24 pages a year). I (personally) try to add 2 pages per week to my own site
(growing at a rate of 100 or so pages per year).
So, make sure you pick a designer who has growth in mind, and get a site to sell your stock.
Click here for a list of common design mistakes (or
at least things that make me surf away from a site). |
