The Importance Of A Professional Website

Okay–so there’s A LOT of ma and pa type small businesses out there that setup their own website–more power to you.  I have to applaud the motivation and dedication that these business owners have.  But here’s the problem–99.999% of these websites end up looking absolutely terrible!
I can think of at least a dozen examples off the top of my head of companies that I refuse to do business with just because their website is so terrible.  It lets my mind wander and start thinking hmm…if their website is this terrible then what else is terrible?  Are the ingredients they use to cook with this terrible?  Is this contractor’s handy work going to be this terrible?  Is this attorney’s legal services going to be this terrible?  Is this doctor going to give me an arm for a leg and a leg for an arm?  You get the point.
I’m quite the DIY enthusiast myself, but I’ll be the first to admit that when I paint a room, build a deck, or drywall a ceiling it doesn’t look the same as if I just hired someone to do it.  Sure I enjoy these types of projects and get a big sense of self gratification out of completing them, but at the same time I’m the only one who has to suffer and look at my handy work (or lack there of) and it has no impact on anyone else!  When you build a website, there’s 6,963,760,153 other people that might see it in this world!
Just this morning I had someone call us interested in video production and marketing.  The first thing out of their mouth was “I called you guys because your website looked professional and I could easily find the information I needed–I actually passed up on 2 of your competitors because their website was so awful that I was concerned about the quality of their work”.  These kinds of things literally happen ALL THE TIME and some people even subconsciously leave websites just because the website is terrible.
I’m not trying to dedicate an entire post to pushing our web design services, but I am trying to save you from losing a lot of business.  If you have a website and it isn’t as professional as it could/should be, then I really would suggest at least considering having a professional redesign your site.  I know–you’re afraid it might cost too much money and you’ve heard that web designers charge like $5,000 an hour–we don’t do any of that–in fact we have professional basic websites starting at just $497 which includes absolutely everything you could possibly need and then some.  And I’m willing to bet that if you have one of these terrible websites I’m referring to you’re losing a lot more than $497 in potential business each week.