Yesterday, whilst on my way to London, I decided to call in on a business we have used in the past.
Its was just a friendly call at first, but I did have another motive, that was to have a look at selling them a website. Their an typical old school business, with a salesman, a boss, his brother and a good product.
So after the friendly chat I brought up their website. I was a bit dissmayed when he said 'it was already being done'. It was being built by a friend of a friend, which means either on the cheap or because it was deemed necessary as it was friend. This can be a complete FAIL, he obviously had not realised what damage potentially could be caused. Its his business. Not a charity, not a family blog, it's his BUSINESS.
I asked to use there PC to have a peek at the site. its horrible to be smug, but after seeing the website that had been partly finished after 6 months. 12 images on second page the smallest of which was just slightly over 1 meg.... probably a 10 meg page! When I first loaded that particular page, I truly believed they had a slow connection to the net!
I ask the owner what he thought of his website, and like most of us, we dont like to disredit our own work. He said 'it was good enough'
Now i am a firm believer in web principles, and a good, clean and tidy site with direct information, prices, photos and description are the ingredients of a sucessful website.
I did not exaust the conversation any more, but gave him my business card and wrote a few websites on the back in his field for him to have a look at. I wonder if he has compared?
My point to the above is, you would not want your salesman dressed in a 'shell suit' half pissed to see a potential new customer, so why treat your website that way.
Maggs can build a website for you, and avoid all the related issues of the 'family' or 'buget busting' website builder!