We’ve been talking with a lot of small business owners in a wide variety of business niches that are weighing the options of using a pre-fab, cookie cutter website and a custom website. There are several things to consider when taking the plunge of setting up a website. Here are some key points to take into consideration.
The first is price. Many franchises or businesses that have a vendor partnership can get free or very inexpensive websites. Most of the sites allow some level of customization in the basic content of the site, but keep it simple so the user doesn’t tinker with and accidentally mess up the site’s overall coding. One client in the medical field had a site that was a copy of one provided to all their “franchise” locations, but because of how it was setup, the individual locations were not able to use on-site search engine optimization or SEO.
The client was trying to compete with other customized websites and they all outranked him in search engine results. How? Their sites were easily read by Google and his was not. The personalization that is available in a pre-fab template site often can’t compete with custom websites. His site, while it had his own business domain name, was like one of those store fronts they use in the movies that look like a real store, but if you open the door and go inside, it’s just a movie set backlot. The “inner workings” of the site were bare bones and not written to help his business show up in the search engine results.
Other “vendor” type sites that are provided in order to promote a certain line of products may take a cut out of your profits or force their special pricing on your small business. Whether or not to use a site like this is up to you, but consider the monthly income lost to the provider and whether the site is ranking well for your market in your local area. Some of these sites get sales because existing customers know the website and shop on them out of loyalty, which is great! However, if the income lost is significant, you may be better of spending the money on a custom site and keeping all the profits for your business.
Customized websites are just that, custom, but some website designers are sold on using elements, such as Flash, in their designs that can’t be read by search engines. To maximize the value and effectiveness of a custom site, you should ask your website designer what kinds of on-site SEO features they use. I won’t bore you with all the “techno-speak” of web design, but you should hear words like “keywords, metatags, title tags, sitemaps” when talking about the design. These are all elements that can be used to ensure the search engines like Yahoo! and Google *KNOW* what your website is all about.
You can also ask how the website will rank in the search engine results. There’s more to high rankings than on-site factors, but the site itself needs to be search engine friendly if you want to have good results. (As an aside, once you get a site, you can try off-site optimization techniques like link building, social media, video and email marketing to drive even more traffic to your site.)
The price point of a custom site is usually significantly higher than the cookie-cutter ones, but you really get what you pay for. If your free or inexpensive site doesn’t get any traffic, doesn’t make any sales, doesn’t grow your customer or prospect list, and doesn’t bring more people into your business, what IS it doing? Probably just hanging out on page 12 of Google search results where no one can find it.
A well designed custom site may cost a few thousand dollars, but it can be your 24 hour online sales force. It should be on the first page of Google, pre-sell your business to your customers and prospects, build your database list and point people to get into your business. That’s what you want a website for, right?
When it comes time to make the step to get your business online, think about what the purpose is for your site. Ask the person or company who will be providing your design if the site will help you market your business. Ask if the site will be easily read by the search engine spiders so Google and Yahoo! know what the site is all about. Ask them if you can modify or edit the keywords so you’re targeting your local market.
Ask them if the site will help you gather prospects and convert them to customers and pay for itself in a few months’ time.
Just ask. If you don’t get the answers you thought you should get, give us a ring. We have a few website designers on our team that will create a site that will work for you, not the other way around.
