Why They Wear a Suit to Work, then Let Their Nephew Design Their Website

While you are at it why not let him do your accounting, sales, marketing, and client communication? It sounds like he really knows his stuff! Hell if he's that good give him my number and he can come and do mine too!

Todd Malicoat is asking "You wear a suit to work, but let your nephew design your website?"

If you can spend several hundred dollars on a nice suit, you understand why it?s important to make an impression. Why is that so difficult to translate to the web?

I've spoken to plenty of people who are wanting a website for their new business. I've explained some of the exciting things that they could do to make a really effective site that their customers will thank them for. They've asked for a quote, I've given them a quote. It sounds like it is going well so far, in a couple of weeks they will have a fantastic website and all of their visitors will be telling them how much they love the information and features there. Right?

Wrong! Well, sometimes..

When I call to follow up and see if they have any questions and they use that line "Oh, the kid down the street is going to do it for me instead."

I don't know whether to congratulate them on finding a cheap deal or to laugh at them!

I might ask them if that is really what is best for their business, but they will probably say something like they don't have much money for a website at the moment. This is after they have just spent thousands of dollars advertising in the yellow pages, their local newspaper and maybe even some radio ads.. (yes, it is a true story here).

So I won't quite forget about them. A month later I'll visit their domain name to see how they are going.. and I'm sorry to all the nephews out there but all of the sites that I have seen so far look like they were made last century. I think I can guess what the visitors will think.

They do know that people will judge their site in 1/20th of a second don't they? Just blink and they'll be on your competitors homepage.

The Moral of the story?

What is your website really worth to you? Yes it is the internet and great things can happen for free sometimes, but you can't escape getting what you pay for. You are not paying for the code behind the webpages, you are hiring them for the knowledge of how to build a website that works.

So how do you know a web designer is any good?

It's simple! Look at their portfolio. They should have a website of their own where they have a few example projects that they have worked on. By viewing that you can get a feel for their style of work and the level of design that you can expect from them on your project. Any serious web designer will have an online portfolio of some sort, and it is even better if they are linking directly to the live sites.