Written by: Blue Tapp
The other day I got a phone call from a health insurance salesperson pushing
a group health plan for small business owners. She worked up the numbers for
me and found that her company could save me about $35.00 a month compared with
my current provider. After hearing more details about this plan I was impressed
and was thinking that it might be wise to switch.
Then, like the internet junkie that I am, I asked for the company's web site address so that I could research the company before deciding. As I said, I was thinking that I might likely make the switch. At this point, she had done a very good job of marketing her company to me. She gave me the address and two minutes later I was looking up their site.
Horror of horrors, the site was just terrible. The design of the site looked more like a novice's personal home page than a professional site with its gregarious animations, a busy background which made the text difficult to read and confusing navigation elements which led me to dead end pages offering no access back to the site. I was NOT impressed. I quickly decided not to use this company's services.
Sure, I wasn't shopping for a web designer and their poor web site design choices perhaps had nothing at all to do with the quality of their insurance program. However, somebody opted to represent their company in this way. Somebody from their company went shopping for the cheapest developer around rather than searching for a reputable web design service. Is this the type of company I want to trust with something as important as health insurance. No.
I don't think my experience is all that rare. Do many people make decisions to use or not use a certain business based on their web site? Yes they do. Your web site represents your company just as much as any other type of marketing medium you use. If your site is unprofessional or not well thought out then people will assume that your business is the same way.
Remember, the business in my example gets an A+ in their phone marketing. But
it only takes one weak link in your marketing system to turn customers away.
You might not be getting a good deal by finding someone to put your web site
together cheaply. In this case, the best deal is to find a developer who will
represent your business in the professional light that you want to portray.
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Blue Tapp is a web developer, graphic artist and owner of Blue's ArtHouse Graphics & Web Design.
This article extracted from the Marketing-Seek Archives at:http://www.marketing-seek.com