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Should An Established Business Do Their Own Website Or Hire A Professional Website Designer
It seems almost every offline business has a website. Sometimes as a matter of keeping up with your competition, it becomes necessary to have one for your business. The problem is do you design a website yourself or hire a professional website designer to do it for you. And if you have a website, what should be in it?
An established business in the flesh and blood world has already developed a reputation with its customer bases and has had face-to-face time with existing clients. People come to that site already knowing, or at least having a good idea about, what they sell or services they offer.
For a business that is already active in the non-WWW world, that web site only needs to reflect the already existing business.
If the business is a big company like Sears, they may want to feature the products they sell in an online catalog, run special sales, point out local stores the surfer can visit, customer service information and so forth. That kind of site serves as an extension of an existing business model.
If the business is for a service such as a home interior decorator that already does business offline, a website can serve more as a brochure to potential customers who can see a sample of their work and references to look up so the customer can decide whether or not to use their service. These businesses can insert their web address in local phone books for potential customers to browse and compare. It saves a lot of time to have such sites up so the owner does not have to keep explaining what exactly they do as the web site does it for them.
If you have an established business, you may come up with the dilemma - do you attempt to do your own website or do you pay someone to do it for you? Not everyone is qualified to do their own web site, including people who claim to do it for a living. However, even the most qualified people can only do so much with your site unless YOU have a clear vision of what you want your site to be.
You do have to establish a vision for your particular business online which should reflect the very nature of your business.
A site that serves as only a brochure does not need to be too complicated. Just make sure you have information your potential clients or customers will need such as contact information, names of key contact people, store location, phone number, e-mail as well as business hours, store policies [refunds, exchanges, rainchecks...], a standard About Us to let your audience get to relate to you more as a person than a cold business, and then detail what it is you do, what you offer, and give testimonials or references.
If your website is merely an online brochure, you can use it on business cards, in print advertising, on commercials, in phone books, or other ways you normally communicate with your customers. By giving them the opportunity to check out your business before going in to see you, you have a more highly motivated buyer instead of a "tire kicker" who will waste your time.
If you plan to use your site to sell products to a wider audience that cannot be accessed locally, your model will be different. This option would put in a mail order department in your existing business if you do not have one already. It would require a staff whose job it was to obtain the orders coming in online and processing them to be shipped.
A website designed to sell the contents you sell in your store is a catalog-type site. You are merely putting up images and descriptions of the products you sell along with a link to add it to a cart to be processed for payment and shipping. A site of this nature does not have to offer much in the way of content, but it does help if your business has a lot of competition.
An example would be a big nutritional product site could have a popular brick and mortar store, but to distinguish itself from all the other online nutritional stores may offer specific articles which are related to the products they sell.
A catalog-type website should be hosted on a site that offers secure connections if you intend on processing credit cards or asking your customers to submit any personal information.
If you have a successful store in the real world, you really have a heavy burden to make sure the website actually reflects your business.
If you hire someone to design your website, it is YOUR responsibility to clarify your business model and vision to the designer, especially if they are not your customer and know nothing about your products or services. If you cannot communicate it effectively, you will not have very good results.
When hiring outside of your company, be sure you give them exact content for use in your site. A designer's job is only to design and not to write content. If you leave content up to a designer, they may not be very good at writing content. And worse, if they know nothing about your business, they have nothing to go on.
It is sometimes better to get someone within your organization to design your company website. Have a department or a single person responsible depending on your budget who know exactly what it is the nature of your business.