Tag: marketing

Planning Your Website Re-design

By now many businesses have a first website and are looking at re-designing it. There can be many reasons for this re-design: to make it more up to date, to add more content, to rank better in the search engines, to fix errors discovered in the first site and to increases it’s overall success.

A website re-design is also a perfect opportunity for you to analyse what works and what doesn’t on your current website and to make changes that will boost your site’s overall performance.

If you are considering re-designing your site the following article can help you plan the project to ensure the re-design is a success. I recommend that the re-design be done in two parts:

  1. Review the performance of your current website.
  2. Use this information to help you and your web designer plan your new website.

Review the Performance of Your Current Website

To start it’s a good idea to review the performance of your current website. Discovering what is working and what is letting you down will help you determine what you need to keep from your existing website and what areas will need improving.

Review the Look and Feel of Existing Website

Depending how long ago your current website was created it may be looking tired and outdated. There are two issues to consider:

  1. Has your businesses identity changed and if so does this need to be reflected in your new website?
  2. Has the website used online design trends that are now outdated? A note here: design trends move fast on the internet. As nice as it is to have a website with the latest online design trends it’s more important to ensure the website’s look can be usable for more than just the next trend.

In most cases an updated, fresh look and feel is a good place to start in a website re-design.

Review Your Current Site’s Usability

The usability of your website is vital to it’s success. If you prospective customers can’t use it they’re hardly going to buy from you. Take a look at your current website and ask yourself how easy is to use. Questions to ask yourselves:

  • Can I quickly see who this company is and what they offer?
  • Is it easy to find what I am looking for?
  • Does the website structure and navigation make sense?
  • Is the website easy to read?
  • Does it compel me to take the next step (place an order, make an enquiry, subscribe etc)?
  • Are order forms easy to use?

It might also be worthwhile to spend some time watching other people (friends, family, clients) use the site and ask for their feedback.

All this information will help you and your web designer plan the website structure and content of your new website.

Review Traffic and Conversions

What is your current website’s traffic like? How many visitors do you get a day? How many pages do they look at? How many visitors convert into customers or subscribers? What are your most popular pages and your least popular pages? Where do your visitors come from?

All of this information will help you decide what pages are vital in your new website, what can be left off and what pages need improving. It can also help you determine if you are maximising the amount of visitors and sales you are getting. If your traffic figures are low it is good to discuss tactics to increase these visitors with your web designer. If you are getting a decent amount of traffic and no sales this also needs to be addressed.

Review Search Engine Rankings

If your website is currently ranking in the search engines it is vital that you make a note of what pages are ranking and for what keyword phrases. You need to share this information with your web designer and make sure that these rankings are not lost in your re-design. Any good web designer will be happy to discuss this with you and take it as seriously as you do.

If you are not ranking in the search engines this needs to be addressed in your re-design.

Review Current Website Hosting

Ask yourself how happy you are with your current website hosting provider. Things to consider include: the service you receive, how often the website goes down, the response times when there’s a problem and the speed of your website, ie how long does it take for your website to come up in a web browser.

If you’ve found your hosting provider to be good it might be best to stay where you are. However if you have had problems discuss this with your web designer who can help you find a better alternative.

Planning Your Re-Design

All of the above will provide you and your web designer with a lot of valuable information that can be taken into account when re-designing your website. I recommend breaking your website re-design down into 6 stages:

  1. Redefine Your Online Goals
  2. Finalise The Website Structure
  3. Develop Your SEO Strategy
  4. Define Your New Look & Feel
  5. Prepare New Website Content
  6. Develop Your Website

Redefine Your Online Goals

This is a good opportunity to redefine your online goals. Are they the same as before or are there some changes? These goals can include:

  • Selling online
  • Promoting your brand
  • Generating leads
  • Earning advertising revenue
  • Cutting costs

The goals you set will help you and your web designer decide how to best approach your website design.

Finalise The Website Structure

The website structure is the blueprint of your new website. It defines each section and page of your website.

This structure should take into account your website goals and the performance of the pages on your current website. I strongly recommend you work with your web designer to finalise this structure. Their expertise can help ensure your website is laid out in a logical, usable way to maximise the return on your investment (ROI).

These days many people want to be able to update the content of their website themselves using a Content Management System (CMS). If this is something you are interested in now is a good time to discuss this with your web designer.

Develop Your SEO Strategy

You’ll want to make sure your re-design does not loose all your current search engine rankings and also look at how you can improve your search engine strategy. For example is there a new product or service you’d like to promote that is not on your current website?

It is important to remember that not all web designers are skilled at optimising websites for the search engines. It’s really important you find a company that can do this, or find a search engine optimisation company who will work with your web designer to ensure your new website is search engine friendly.

Define Your New Look & Feel

The first step in defining the look and feel of your website is to ensure that your new website has the same look and feel (or branding) as your existing marketing materials. It’s always a good idea to provide these to your web designer so they can get a feel for your businesses identity. You may also want to give your web designer a list of websites you like and dislike to help give them an idea of your tastes.

This is also a good time to talk about the longevity of your website and how often you feel you will want to make it over. If you want to ensure the website has a long life it would be best to avoid design the website using the latest online design trends and go for a look that is more timeless.

Prepare New Website Content

Once you’ve defined your website strategy and structure you’ll need to create the content for your site. This content can be created by you by a website copywriter or your web designer (if they offer this service). Again, use the feedback from your current website to ensure that this content is suited to your customers, is compelling and engaging and supports your online goals.

Developing Your Website

Once you have completed the first five steps it’s time to build your website. By this time you and your web designer should have a clear idea of what your site’s goals are, how they can be achieved and the steps required to fulfil them.

Putting It All Together

A website re-design is an excellent opportunity to capitalise on the success of your current website and to rectify any mistakes that were made. It’s also a great time to listen to your customers and build a website with features that will encourage them , and new customers, to come back time and time again.

A Succesful Website Starts With the Strategy

It’s pretty obvious that any good house starts with a solid foundation. The same applies to a website. In order to ensure a successful website that achieves your goals you need to start with a solid foundation. You need to develop a sound website strategy that outlines your goals, target audience, market position, competitors and marketing efforts. This strategy, or blueprint, will help you and your web designer develop a website that will achieve you online goals.

Put it this way if you don’t know why you want a website, apart from because everyone else has one, how will you be able to measure your success? Quite simply you can’t.

So how do you develop your strategy? To get you started consider the following:

What Are Your Online Goals?

What are the goals of your website? What do you want to achieve?

  • Sell products online?
  • Build sales leads?
  • Reduce support costs?
  • Inform people?
  • Attract newsletter sign-ups?
  • Attract advertising revenue?
  • Brand yourself or your company?
  • To reduce time providing telephone support?

Once you’ve defined your goals you can set about working out how to achieve them and how to measure the results.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

Who is your website targeted to? Think about your audience and try to break it down in terms of:

  • Age
  • Sex
  • Location
  • Income
  • Internet skills
  • Other

This will help you to determine your target audience which in turn will influence the look and feel of the website, whether you need to target an international, national or local market, what sort of pricing strategy to adopt, how easy the website should be to use and what sort of ongoing marketing strategies are required.

Who is Your Competition? How Are They Positioned?

Take the time to check out the competitive space. Questions to ask:

  • Who are your online competitors?
  • How do they position themselves?
  • How easy/hard is their website to use? Is it engaging? Compelling?
  • How are they positioned in the search engines? Can you compete?

How Will Prospective Customers Find You?

Once your site is built and launched you need to ensure a steady stream of targeted visitors. Now is the time to start looking at your ongoing marketing and what strategies you’ll need to adopt. Where will your prospects come from? Some to consider:

  • Search engines?
  • Word of mouth & referrals?
  • Offline advertising?
  • Online advertising?
  • Forum participation?
  • Blogging?
  • Other?

The answers to these questions will help you define your marketing strategy and your overall website strategy. For example if you feel search engines will be an important driver of traffic to your website it is vital that that is taken into account when your website is being designed.

By considering the above you’ll be able to put together a clear blueprint detailing your website strategy and how it should be implemented. And in the long run it will help you, and your web designer, create a successful website.

The Recipe For Online Success

I’ve spoken to, and worked with, numerous people who have decided to set-up an online business. And as with bricks and mortar establishments some succeeded spectacularly and some fail badly. I’ve analysed these success and failures and have found some common traits in the successful online ventures. So without further ado here’s my straightforward recipe for running an online business, successfully.

Research Your Market

It seems obvious but this is one of the most overlooked areas of starting an online business. Which is all the more strange when you consider how easy it is to conduct research into a market and it’s competitiveness on the internet.

Researching your market will help you determine whether there is a need for your idea, whether that need is already being serviced, and if so how well. Using a search engine, such as Google, can help you determine the level of competitiveness of your chosen industry. You can use it to see how many relevant businesses come up in common searches (the more results the more competitive it will be) and then check out those websites to see how they are run.

Think about your audience, will you be focusing on a small regional area or aiming for a global market? Is there a reason why a particular demographic would want to choose you over another business? Can you, for example, promote a favourable exchange rate or the ability to work while the rest of the world sleeps?

Finally, it’s important that you take into account whether your idea translates to being sold online. For example large, heavy, fragile products will be harder to ship and therefore sell than smaller, easy to post items.

Set Realistic Budgets

I know I’ve talked about this before but I am again as I can’t emphasise enough how important setting a realistic budget is. If you’re planning on running a successful online business you will need to budget for both the establishment and the ongoing marketing of that business.

If you’re reluctant to divulge your budget when talking to online service providers at least provide them with a ballpark figure so they are able to tailor a solution to fit your needs. You’ll probably find that costs vary from company to company – take the time to do your research and choose the one that not only fits your budget but the one you feel will best help you succeed (more on this below).

Surround Yourself With a Good Team

In order to succeed in your online business you will need to ensure you’re working with a web team that can help you achieve your goals. As a starting point you will need the services of the following people:

  • Web Hosting Company
  • Web Design Company
  • Search Engine Marketing / Internet Marketing Company

You can choose to go with separate companies or select a full service business who can help you with everything. Whatever you decide the most important thing is to make sure you pick a company you feel is a good fit.

The right company will understand the principles of business and selling online, they will understand how to get a website to rank in the search engines and most importantly they will be able to build you a website that prospects find easy to use and converts those prospects into customers.

Budget is important, obviously, but it’s just as important, if not more, to work with a company who understands your requirements and is able to help you to realise your goals and turn it into a profitable business.

Invest in Online Marketing

Once you’ve got your website online you need to market it to attract targeted prospects. A mix of the following internet marketing efforts will be a good start:

  • Search Engine Optimisation – usually best done in conjunction with building your website. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of creating a website that ranks highly in the search engines for keyword phrases related to your business. A motel in Cairns would want to rank well for phrases such as “cairns motel” for example.
  • Link Development – links from credible, related type websites will not only bring targeted prosects to your website it will also help you with your search engine rankings.
  • Advertising & Sponsorships – seek out other websites that you can advertise on. Look for sites that attract an audience you think would be interested in your products and/or services. Consider banner ads, sponsorships, competitions and newsletter advertising, to name a few.
  • Pay Per Click Advertising – the two main players in the Pay Per Click (PPC) market are Google and Yahoo! PPC allows you to create advertisements that only display when specific keywords, chosen by you, are searched on. When your ad is clicked on you pay an amount (or bid), set by you. Bids start from about AU$0.10 and a campaign can be up and running in a few minutes.
  • Online Newsletters – online newsletters are a fabulous way to communicate with prospective customers. It’s an opportunity to showcase your knowledge, provide information about your products and services and promote special offers.

It’s the old adage, you’ve got to spend money to make money. With the right marketing mix and a focus on creating a positive return on your investment (ROI) your online marketing efforts will help you build and run your business successfully.

Finally, remember that the above suggestions are just a starting point. Talk to your internet marketing expert who should be able to help you develop an online marketing plan that will grow your business.

Be Prompt and Responsive

You’ve found a site that sells the exact widget you want. You place your order, and… pray. It sounds awful I know but I commonly hear people say that they’ve contacted a business via their website, or placed an order, and are now wondering if they’ll ever hear from them. You don’t want to be one of those businesses. Clearly state the best ways for people to contact you, let them know when they should expect a response and what to do if they’ve not heard anything.

On an e-commerce site have the order response page acknowledge an order and provide a shipping timeframe. Follow up with a confirmation email again letting the customer know when they should expect their goods. And finally, send them an email when the package has actually shipped.

The internet can seem very anonymous. By continually communicating with your customers and reassuring them along the way they will be confident in doing ongoing business with you. And perhaps even recommending you to their friends.

Measure Your Results

A website that’s not being measured and tracked is like running around in the dark, with sunglasses on. Are you getting lots of visitors and few sales? Are you getting a few visitors but most of them make a purchase? Where are your visitors coming from? What do they look at? How long do they stay?

One of the great benefits of running an online business is the ability to collect and analyse website visitor data. All this data will help you tailor your website and refine your marketing to ensure you’re bringing in maximum visitors and converting them into customers.

There’s no substitute for hard work but with some careful research and planning and ongoing effort into promoting and managing your online business you too can be one of the internet success stories!

Internet Marketing Essentials

Once your website is built it is important that you spend time and money on marketing it online to ensure that you are attracting targeted visitors who you can then convert into customers. There are many internet marketing strategies, in fact far to many to mention here. However the 5 strategies below are essential to any online marketing efforts.

Search Engine Rankings

One of the most important considerations when building a website is to make sure it is search engine friendly. The benefits of this is a website that not only looks good and provides information, but one that appears at the top of the search engine results for relevant keywords for your business. For example if you had a bed and breakfast in Daylesford Victoria wouldn’t it be great if your website was one of the top results for “bed and breakfast accommodation daylesford” in the search engines. With results like that you are guaranteed that prospective customers looking for your service will find your business.

The process of creating a search engine friendly website is called Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short. It is usually done by an SEO professional, or your web designer, if they have experience with SEO. There are also plenty of online resources if you would like to give it a go yourself. I’ve listed some of the better ones in the resources section at the end of this article.

As well as optimising your website it is important that you get links from other websites to yours. Search engines, such as Google, partially rank websites by the number, and quality of links to have to your website.

It’s important to remember however, that high search engine rankings take some time to be achieved so it’s important that you focus on additional internet marketing strategies while you work on your SEO.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay Per Click (PPC) ads are the sponsored ads you see on search engines such as Google or Yahoo! With Pay Per Click advertising you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it’s shown. You select your search terms and set an amount you are prepared to pay if someone clicks on your ad. When a user searches for, or is using, a search term you have bid for, your ad will appear on the right side of results pages under the heading Sponsored Links. If a user clicks on your ad you pay the amount you bid for that term.

Pay Per Click is a great way to target hundreds of niche keyword terms for a relatively low cost. In addition it is highly targeted and the results are highly quantifiable. The benefit of this is targeted traffic to your website – ie the people visiting are looking for your services!

Pay Per Click campaigns can be running within hours and is a great way to drive prospective customers to your website quickly. For this reason a PPC campaign can compliment your SEO efforts. It sends you targeted traffic quickly while you wait for your SEO efforts to kick in.

Online Newsletters

Online newsletters are a fabulous way to communicate with prospective customers. It’s an opportunity to showcase your knowledge, provide information about your products and services and promote special offers.

When deciding to start an online newsletter you’ll need to consider the following:

1. How often you want to send it out – you want to send it out regularly enough so that people look forward, and remember it, but not so often as to inundate your readership. With the amount of information overload doing on these days that can be a fine line to walk.
2. What sort of content you want to include. It’s always best to keep a few regular content types to help give it a consistency. The amount of regular, fresh and interesting content you can come up with will help you in determining how often you send it out.
3. How you will manage your newsletter and your subscriptions. There are numerous email newsletter management systems on the market so take the time to choose the best for your requirements. I’ve listed some of the more popular in the resources section at the end of this article.

Your should also make sure your newsletter is branded the same as your website. It helps make your business recognisable and memorable to your prospective customers. Your web designer should be able to help you with the branding and setting up the newsletter and subscription system.

Blogs and Forums

Additional ways to market your business and attract links from other websites include creating a blog and participating in internet forums.

Blogs

Blogging can bring your business many benefits:

  • Blogging is a great way to communicate with clients, customers and prospects. Whether it be talking about new products or services, company news or resolving an issue, you can communicate on a level not seen before.
  • A blog give you a voice which in turn gives readers an idea of who you and your business are. Your goal is to then engage them enough to want to do business with you.
  • Blogging can help position you as an expert in your industry.
  • Blogs attracts links and can help you in your search engine rankings.

Internet Forums

Internet forums are a way to communicate with others in your industry and potential customers. It can help you promote your business and show off your expertise and knowledge. It can also help you expand your knowledge and meet like minded people.

To find relevant forums try typing in your industry and “forums” at a search engine such as Google.

Website Analytics

Website analytics, the process of analysing your website’s visitors, is a powerful way to understand what is going on with your website. It enables you to see who is visiting your website, where they are coming from, what search terms they used (if applicable) to find your site, how long they stayed on your site, what pages they looked at and so on.

Website analytics can be handled in two ways:

1. By analysing your website log files with a software program.
2. Installing a small piece of code on your website.

There are many applications out there ranging from free to extremely expensive. I’ve listed some of the more popular in the resources section at the end of this article.

There you have it. The above internet marketing essentials are a great start in helping you to make the most of your website by attracting targeted, prospective customers to it.

If I Build It Will They Come?

I’ve been building websites for a long time. Over 12 years in fact. In the early days it was relatively easy to put up a site, let a few search engines know about it and voila – success! This was at a time when the web was new and the competition was lacking. It was a great time but not one I expected to last. And it didn’t.

These days having a website is no guarantee of success. It takes blood, sweat and… yep you guess it marketing to make your online venture a success. Unfortunately too many people still think if they put a site online the masses will flock to them. And then wonder why they don’t. It’s also a myth that people like to perpetuate. Put a site online and you’ll be making millions within days.

In reality your website needs to be carefully planned, built and marketed just like any other business venture. Start by defining your strategy and determining how you want to make money from your website. Make sure you choose a web designer who understands good design principles, usability, SEO and internet marketing. And last but not least develop your marketing strategy.

I’ll go over some of these strategies in future posts but for now at least consider:

  • Web Design – build a website that focuses on calls to action and conversions. Pretty ain’t enough.
  • SEO – make sure you build a search engine friendly website from the get go.
  • Pay Per Click Advertising – look at PPC advertising. It is a great way to drive traffic while you are waiting for your SEO results to kick in and long term can be a useful way to drive additional, targeted traffic to your website.
  • Online Newsletter – send out a regular newsletter.
  • Blog – start a blog.
  • Network.
  • Write articles for both online and offline publications.
  • Get links to your website.
  • Join online forums.
  • Write e-books.

This list is by no means exhaustive but it’s a good start. By creating a marketing strategy and working on it steadily you’ll achieve the online success you’ve been searching for. Good luck!

Miriam Tackles the isms of SM

Social Media Marketing is currently the BIG thing in search marketing. I’ve heard both positives and negatives for it but until now now have not delved into it too deeply. Luckily
Miriam Ellis-Loraditch of Solas Web Design has taken the plunge with a great article talking to a number of search marketers, including me, about their experiences with Social Media Marketing.

There’s some great stuff in it and it’s well worth a read.

Referrals. Are All Your Eggs in One Basket?

The local Yellow Pages is running a radio campaign to promote advertising in the Yellow Pages. In one spot they use a business owner to talk about how successful his Yellow Pages ad is. In it he states that over 80% of his traffic comes from his Yellow Pages ad. 80%! Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

I’m sure the Yellow Pages loves this figure but as a business owner I’d be worried if such a large percentage of my enquiries came from the one source. It’s the same argument you’ll read online about relying on Google for all your traffic.

When marketing your business you should be focusing on promoting your business in a variety of ways both online and off. This will ensure that your referrals come from many sources including search engines, word of mouth, newsletter promotions, Yellow Pages and so forth. Apart from widening your net this ensures that should you receive a drop in traffic from one source you’ll take comfort knowing you have plenty of others to keep those referrals coming in. If you don’t you’ll like that Yellow Pages campaign from a while ago “Not Happy Jan“.

John Scott on Link Building in 2007

John Scott over at V7N is one of the smartest internet marketers I know. He has just written an excellent post, John Scott on Link Building, which is a must read for anyone interested in driving targeted traffic to their website.

There’s a ton of gems but here’s a few:

You see, Google is still running link based algorithms. Google, however, wants to count links which were meant to be legitimate “votes” for a web page. Google does not want to count links as votes if those links were placed on a web page for monetary reward, or as spam.

Links remain the most important part of any search engine marketing campaign. Links are SEO. The difference between link building in 2002 and link building in 2007 is that the search engines are better equipped to evaluate those links, and this forces website owners to up their game.

Nice post John!

Building a Website On a Budget

As a web designer one of the most common questions I’m asked is “how much does a website cost?”. Unfortunately the answer isn’t that simple and my answer usually is how long is a piece of string. The cost of a website is determined by your requirements. A small four page brochure website will be significantly less that a website that sells 4000 products online. You’ll also find the costs vary from one web design firm to another.

When building a website on a budget it’s important that you spend time researching your requirements and planning your website. This will help give both you and your web designer a clear idea of what you are after and what steps to take to ensure a successful online presence.

Define Your Online Goals

The first step in building your website is defining your online goals. What do you want your website to do for your business? Is your goal to sell online, collect leads, inform people or to promote your brand? You may have more than one goal for your site.

So what are the goals of your website?

  • To sell online?
  • To collect targeted leads?
  • To provide information about your products and services?
  • To brand yourself?
  • To provide customer support?
  • To entertain?
  • To build a community?
  • To receive advertising revenue?
  • To reduce printing and mail out costs?

Everything about your website should be geared towards achieving these goals. When deciding on the goals, keep in mind that not all goals need to be achieved at once. It’s often a good idea to prioritize your goals to ensure they are achievable within your budget. For example, you want to sell women’s fashion online but your budget will not initially cover a whole e-commerce store. Consider starting with a site that provides reviews of your latest fashions, a newsletter for people to sign up to, contact details and directions to your offline store. As your site grows in popularity you can add additional features. A really good web designer will have insights into how you can build a website that can scale and support your long term goals. Defining your goals is the first step in realising a successful website. The clearer your they are the better the strategy you will develop, and the easier it is to measure your online success.

Look At Your Budget

Once your website’s goals have been defined it’s time to start looking at your budget. When building your website you’ll need to looks at all the costs involved including the website design, content creation, website hosting and the promotion of your website.

The design of your website can include logo design, graphic creation and photography, such as product photography. Take a look at your current marketing materials and determine what can be used on your website and what will need created from scratch. It’s important to keep in mind that your online image should reflect your offline brand. This can be achieved by using the same logo and colour schemes as well as utilising other elements used in your existing marketing materials.

Content creation more simply refers to the text on your website. This text includes information about your business and the products and/or services you offer. Are you able to write this text yourself or will you require someone to do it for you? The text on your website will also have an impact on your search engine rankings. Incorporating keyword phrases that people would use to search for your products and services should be included within your text. This is part of what is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It’s worthwhile discussing this with your web designer. Many web designers offer this service or if not should be able to recommend a specialist firm. If you have the time you could also read up and have a go at doing this yourself. At the end of this articles are list some resources to get you started.

Look At Your Website Hosting Options

Your next consideration is choosing a website hosting provider. There are hundreds of thousands of website hosting providers which can make choosing the right one a daunting task. When researching your available options keep in mind the following:

1. Reliability
2. Speed
3. Storage Space
4. Scalability
5. Support

Once again your web designer should be able to help you choose a website hosting provider to suit your budget and requirements.

Website Promotion

The final consideration in developing your budget is the promotion of your website. A common mistake is the assumption that if you build it they will come. Not so. The internet is huge, and growing every day, if you want people to visit your site you need to promote it, just like you would an offline business. Website promotion can include a multitude activities including:

  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
  • Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
  • Link Building
  • Newsletter Creation
  • Blogs
  • Promotions
  • Forums

There is far too much to cover here but I’ve provided some references at the end of the article to get you started.

When it comes to setting your online budget I often find it’s better to look at your budget in terms of what you are prepared to spend in the first 12 months as opposed to just budgeting the initial development of your website. By having a budget for the first 12 months you and your web designer can look at the best way to allocate your money. It may be that you spend 60% building and hosting your website and the remaining 40% to promote it.

Talk To Potential Web Designers

Once you have defined your website’s goals and set a budget it’s time to start talking to potential web designers.

Don’t be afraid to let the web designers you’re talking to know what your budget is. Even a ballpark figure is better than keeping them in the dark. Any professional web designer will work with you to ensure that you get the maximum bang for your buck. By keeping your budget quiet they have no way to ensure they are giving you their best possible advice or recommendations. Consider the analogy of buying a car. If you’re in the market for a new car you need to give the salesperson an idea of what you are prepared to spend and what you want in car so they can make the best recommendations. It’s the same when building a website.

When talking to potential clients I always say when choosing a web designer – don’t just go with the cheapest designer. Go with the one you can relate to. The one who makes sense and seems to be on your wavelength. As long as your budget is reasonable a professional web designer should be able to work with you to develop a successful solution. You and your web designer should be a team working toward the mutual goal of building a successful website within your budget. The more you work as a team the more likely that your end product will be a success.

Summing It Up

In conclusion in order to build a successful website on a budget you need to spend some time developing your site’s goals and setting a realistic budget that will allow you to meet those goals. Armed with this knowledge you are ready to choose the right web designer who can help you realise your vision and help you build a successful website.