What Makes a Good Website?
Never a day goes by without receiving emails from self proclaimed ‘web experts’ and their claims are often the stuff of pure fantasy with costs ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Most offer speedy solutions with little or no understanding of your business, your products, levels of service and the target market(s) your looking to penetrate. Indeed, most aren’t that interested and just want a quick fix and sale!
Even with a genuine expert website builder, their view of what makes a ‘good website’ against that of a professional marketer’ will be quite some distance apart. Whilst they might be experts in coding and SEO, more often than not - they don’t have the faintest clue about marketing. This can create a huge hurdle when it comes to gaining an understanding of your industry, your business, your products, your target audience as well as your businesses USP’s. Furthermore, they often have little appreciation for brand integrity and corporate style.
It’s worth considering that your website is easily your most important marketing tool and for this reason as well as the points already made, we would always advise that your website development is best co-ordinated through a professional marketing practitioner. This will help to achieve:
A corporate, coordinated look and feel.
Navigation and usability that’s in tune with your target audience.
Professionally written content that demonstrates a thorough understanding of the industry your in, as well as your business, products and levels of service.
A pro-active / ongoing web development campaign, that works hand in hand with business developments, regularly updating and adding to content.
Some years ago a client (a manufacturer of high end range cooker appliances) directly employed a ‘professional’ website designer that charged a mind-blowing 5 figure some for a website. The result was a highly impressive and technically complex presentation that clearly satisfied the designers ‘itch.’ The problem? A bill in excess of £20,000 (this was a good few years ago!) and a site so complex that a large part of the brands target audience/age group, would struggle to navigate around it.
I have also seen sites that are very well optimised but fail to deliver since amateurish design, poor imagery and graphics along with poor copywriting and typography act as an instant ‘turn off.’
It’s important to understand that a skilled website builder isn’t necessarily a good designer, copywriter or indeed a marketer and that cheap or expensive doesn’t always make for a good results.
At PMD, first and foremost, we are marketers. We develop an in-depth understanding of your business and produce content of the highest quality. Working with our pool of proven BUT ‘realistically priced,’ expert website builders we will produce attractive, impactful and informative websites that deliver tangible and measurable results.