A website is the pivot point of your online presence and represents you, your brand and your important message to the world! Putting your best foot forward with your brand and message means your website is functional and user friendly, converting visitors to patients, and thus increasing profits. While an inexpensive website might be tempting, the Acara team hears, all too often, about the horror stories when it comes to “cheap” website development. In the long run, it always ends up costing the client more money than if they made the proper investment upfront.
Below are a few recommendations when evaluating the quality of a website developer’s work and strategies that our team follows to maximize your digital reach:
- Make sure it’s a custom-built site which is developed around your brand and business strategy. Stay away from companies who use templates and simply plug in details of your business. This will not properly highlight what makes your business stand out from the competition.
- A fully responsive, mobile friendly site is essential in today’s digital world. Not only has mobile become the top way customers are searching for you and your services, but Google and other search engines give priority ranking to sites that can adapt to different screen sizes.
- Who wants to wait for something that’s slow to load? Your future customers certainly don’t. With the average time someone waits for a page to load only a few seconds, and continuing to shrink, make sure you have a fast & lightweight site.
- Don’t forget about content! Too often, website developers will request that someone from your team write the information on your site. Unless you have someone who does injectables and just happens to be a trained writer, your site can’t tell the story it needs to in order to bring the visitor through the various sections. Here at Acara, we have a dedicated team of industry content writers working to produce eloquent, unique content to support ongoing optimization.
- Something often overlooked when working with a website development company is ownership rights. You might never think that when signing a contract with them you can’t walk away at any time and take your complete website with you. Shockingly though, upon termination, some of these contracts state that your site is their property. Acara firmly believes that you have the right to your site and anything we build for you can be transitioned seamlessly should you no longer want us to manage it.
There is power in doing everything at the same time, together and under the same roof, and that is what Acara offers. We hope these guidelines will help you when considering the options.