We frequently come across the argument “We had a website built years ago but it doesn’t do anything for us”. Usually we’re talking to the potential customer purely because they had a website built years ago and it patently won’t be doing anything for them. Quite often the site is doing them actual damage, as it’s making them look bad and actively turning away potential custom.
This is a bizarre twist – a website is supposed to be a shop front that favourably promotes a company’s products and services.
So why not just get rid of the website and get rid of that worry? Well, you can bet that your competitors (the ones who are doing well) are doing the opposite – constantly updating their website, as well as blogging, posting to social media and engaging in an aggressive SEO campaign so that they’ll float to the top of any relevant Google search. Once the searcher clicks on their site, they’ll be impressed with the up to date website and they corner the online market. Their constantly monitored and updated site does something for them!
Case Study
We have a landscape gardening client. We built the website for them for less than £2,000, and they invest £750 per month with us to promote the site online. Attracting one new customer each month brings in between £2,000 and £10,000, and puts them immediately into profit. They get considerably more than one new customer every month! Over 80% of their new work now comes in through online enquiries, and new teams are being trained up constantly to cope with the backlog of projects.
Not everyone is as forward thinking or as aggressive as our landscape gardener, but keeping up your online appearance is essential now more than ever. Almost everyone has a smart phone with ubiquitous access to the internet. The act of checking out who might be the best option to use is now almost invariably done online. If you’re not there, you probably won’t figure – if you’re there and you look bad, you definitely won’t!