What are the 3 reasons to use a professional website development service versus a freelancer? Reason 1: You want the website support that a professional website development service can and should offer. A freelancer typically "sets and forgets"...he or she may not even be in the business anymore when you find you need help! Watch the video to learn about reasons 2 and 3!
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hello, and welcome to our professional website development services video. I'm Chad Hill, and I have Adam Stetzer here with me.
Good afternoon, Chad. Having a website is really not a luxury in modern times, right? More and more people do business on the internet. And people are more and more interested in how they can get leads and grow their business through their website, seeing it as a viable marketing tool. So I thought we'd talk about professional website development today, and maybe give our viewers three strong reasons why they should consider a professional firm when starting a web design project.
Right. And I suppose the question you're asking is really kind of comparing a professional website development service firm to maybe a freelancer or a friend of the family, right?
Right. It used to be, you'd get your nephew to do this, or you met someone at church, or whatever. And in the early days, there were sort of hackers doing this. But website development's come a long way. So how should they shop today?
I think the first thing that you get when you're working with a professional website development company is that you get all the resources you need under one roof. So typically, a freelancer is going to be maybe strong in development, or maybe a designer, but it's rare to have somebody who's good at development, design, and then things like writing copy. So it's rare to have one person to do that.
So what we can bring the table is that we have a team of Wordpress developers. We have website designers. We have copy writers and editors. So getting that all in one place, you can get the project done, is the first reason to pick a professional website development company. Right, and Websites are a lot more complicated than they used to be, right? Now they may include Flash items. They use J Query. They have buttons. They have widgets. They communicate with Twitter. They need to have API integration with Google Analytics so you can track your traffic. So as Chad's saying, there's a lot more under the covers that a modern website does require if it's really going to work for you. And so you want to be with a firm that's going to have all those skill sets.
Right. And the second reason that you want to work with a professional website development company is really around support. Because once the website's launched, that's really the starting point of your work on the web. And so you want a company that is going to be there and has established service level commitments and would be able to respond to any of your requests, in terms of adding new content, helping you with new graphics, or even maintenance items-- keeping this site updated to the latest version of whatever code you're using.
So you want to make sure that support's there. And again, when you compare a professional website development company to more of a freelance model, the downside of a freelancer is that they may get a new job. They may go off to college. They may just not be available when you need them. And that's a real downside.
Right. How many phone calls have we gotten along these lines, Chad. You know, I can't find my login to my website. And my nephew did it, and he went off to college. Or, I hired a freelancer who did this in between jobs. It's six months later, and I have malware warnings coming from Google. My site's been hacked, and I can't do anything about it. Or, I just got a call from my host, and my website caused some sort of virus, or was hacked. And I sent off 300,000 spam emails or phishing attempts to get bank accounts. And I can't reach anyone to help me.
So support is a really big deal. You want to be with a professional firm so that you know that support's going to be there down the road. It's really easy to get focused on the launch and how shiny and new and pretty the website is. But the reality is, this is a serious marketing tool, and it has to be supported. That's why you want to be with a firm that's going to be around. Absolutely. And I think the final thing when you're looking at using a professional website development company is looking at what the plan is for actually driving visitors, or getting visitors to come to your website, and turn into new business for your company.
And so, when you're getting comparing this to a freelance versus a professional website development company, The professional company is going to have a plan for what they're going to do to actually start to drive. Improve your rankings in the search engines, help you with pay per click, and really develop a campaign that's going to help you meet the goals of getting new leads off the web.
Right. So as we said the top of this video blog, the website more and more, is just a means to ends. It's a marketing tool to bring business to you, to bring audience. But you want to hire, really, a multi-disciplinary development firm that's going to be able to help you with SEO, with PPC, with social media, with data integration, tracking, reporting, email marketing-- there are a whole suite of tools that go around a website today. And it's just going to be a lot less headache to work with a firm that's got all those resources all in one place.