What Type of Website Do I Need?
Hiring a Professional Website Developer
Building a website can be pretty easy for anyone today. Even a website hosted on a free service like WordPress without a fancy dot com domain name can get you started. Web builders offer attractive layouts and step-by-step instructions that make the process almost foolproof. It's a wonder people still pay others to do the work for them.
The reality is, with some research and some work, just about anyone with Internet access can build a website. Like any professional service, a website developer has spent time learning and practicing the tricks and techniques that produce the best results. We understand the rules of the road for building websites that work for the target audience and maintaining them for performance and security. So, now that you know why you should hire a professional website developer, let's look at how to go about getting your website built.
Developing a Marketing Strategy
- Budget
- Urgency
- Personnel
- Audience
- Lifespan
- Resources
The type of website that's right for your business depends on a number of factors. Over the lifetime of your business, you may even find the needs of your website change dramatically. Consider a bakery. When they open they may want to build a basic website and focus on building their presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Yelp. Later they decide they want to launch a catering service, so they build a brochure website that features this service with a link where visitors can set up an event. Eventually they want to publish recipes and tips, so they migrate their basic website to a blog. Customers love their recipes and the cooking tools they sell at their gift counter so much they are ready to set up and online shop where they sell books and kitchen goods online. After fifteen years in the business they are making more money in advertising revenue and product sales on their website than the bakery and sell the website for a hearty sum they put down on a retirement home in South Carolina.
Customers rarely realize the potential for their website. Far too many tools out there ignore the strategic outcomes that should direct the development of the website from the get-go.