It is difficult to choose a web design company or to choose whom you will rely on for online marketing.
In advertising days of passed, you simply turned to your local news station, your local news paper, or radio station and said I need advertising.
They’d put it all together for you, and you’d get featured on Paul Harvey, or during Oprah, or in the Sunday comics.
But web design is a whole different story. There’s thousands, if not millions of web designers, ‘freelancers’, and ‘online advertising specialists’, all targeting your area.
Even the advertisers say the same thing, and there is billions more of them.
With the other types of advertising, you could somewhat figure out what you were getting in return for your money. But now, you don’t know what high quality HTML or CSS look like. You don’t know if your database is secure. You don’t know if your SEO company is not doing you damage by violating Google’s Guidelines.
How are you supposed to figure this thing out?
A knowledgeable web partner makes all of this a lot simpler process. Just like you used to expect your newspaper advertising contact to help with the layouts and the design of your ad, you should be able to expect the guy who built your website to tell you how to effectively market it. He should be able to explain and educate you on the process and functions that are at work in your site. Your web designer should be able to tell you about Google’s guidelines. Your web designer should be a company who is easy to get a hold of, before and after you sign on for their services. Your web design partner should have a local representative, or at least have a valid business license in your state or country. Your partner should have a physical address in the US that you can contact them through. They should provide you with a contract or agreement that sets out their responsibilities to you. And they should explain who is legally responsible if they fail.
Sadly, most web design firms can’t meet that criteria. Why? Because most of them are cheap, overseas, rip offs, using templates to ‘custom’ make their websites. What do those companies look like? Usually there is one US based contact with no physical address or US business license, a dozen websites that all lead to the same ‘company’, and a room full of $1.00 an hour, untrained data entry people in India who take your company logo and content and upload it to unsecure, uncustom templates from Joomla or Drupal. You notice how none of that sounds good?
A good web design firm can provide you with the following:
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- A US based contact and a physical address.
- A company name and a valid business license in the state’s that they offer service in.
- Regular, reliable communication, before and after you sign on for their services.
- Clear expectations and legal responsibilities that their products are what they say they are and are in compliance with Google’s Webmaster guidelines.
- The ability to educate and guide you on your website design and on your marketing. They should not automatically tell you that you need to sign up for four hundred different services, without telling you why.
- Technical support and maintenance for your site or application development.
- Educational background and work history. You expect this from all of your other employees, why not your web designer?
- No useless employees. Why does a small web design firm need receptionists, downtown offices, or other corporate personnel? It’s just wasted money.
I am happy to tell you that my company is all of those things. We have a team of eight professionals, all with extensive experience and education in their area of practice. We do not have outside sales people, we do not have receptionists, and we definitely aren’t paying for a downtown office space. We’re in Venice if that matters. We are legally registered California business. And we are your best adviser as to the ins and outs of creating a successful ecommerce business or supporting a traditional business with online marketing.
If you would like to know more, please review our website or call us at 310.736.2848 (yes, that’s a local area code for LA) or 253..230..5940 (local to Seattle/ Tacoma, WA).
