Why Your Hosting-Design-Marketing Team Should Be Under One Roof
By Vanessa Salvia, 8/4/010
With some things, having different service providers makes perfect sense. You go to a mechanic's shop for a broken transmission, and a tire shop when your car gets a flat. A carpet cleaning company can certainly keep your floors clean, but that's not who you would hire when your walls need painting. The big difference between these examples and service providers for a website is that the carpet cleaner and house painter don't need to be able communicate with each other in order to complete their work and do a good job. Many web-related service providers specialize in only one area of website design, marketing or tech support, which means you are left navigating many different vendors when you need service in different areas.
High Conversion Rates Rely on a Strong Team
Without good website usability, your conversion rate suffers. Online shoppers who find a website confusing or difficult to navigate-maybe due to slow-loading pages, broken links, error messages, cumbersome shopping cart check-out, lack of a search function, etc-will simply leave the site. Navigation should be clear, information should be easy to find, and the check-out process simple and secure. In general, poor website design leads to a poor user experience that results in more shopping cart abandonments and bounces from the site-all result in a smaller bottom line for you.
When you need a website, or a redesign of an existing site, the designer makes their own decisions based (often, primarily) on good looks, with usability sometimes taking a back seat. But an Internet marketing company will have very different ideas about how the content should be presented on a website with regard to user experience and search engine optimization. Most Internet marketing firms have limited technical expertise, while most data management and development firms have limited knowledge about marketing. The hosting company will not be able to answer your questions about how the functionality of your website will impact your Internet marketing plans.
Don't Be Hampered By Competing Agendas
When you choose different providers for your data services, web marketing and design, you are left dealing with competing and often conflicting agendas of multiple vendors. A typical scenario for a website owner shopping for services involves navigating several different providers and many suggestions and great ideas that either never get implemented or are rendered ineffective when everybody puts in their two cents. Imagine each of these different companies calling and emailing each other, and calling and emailing you, and you calling and emailing each in turn, before any decision can be implemented. You're paying for that time, in more ways than one. As a site owner, you either need different firms that have shown through previous client testimonials that they can work well together, or one firm that has the range of expertise necessary to accomplish each of these tasks efficiently and effectively.
Over the 15 years that the team at HEROWeb Marketing and Design have been in this industry as an ecommerce platform provider, we have conscientiously chosen to develop each of these complementary services, because we view having in-house access to all website needs as critical for a site owner's success. As a new site owner, it may be hard to see into the future and imagine the scalable services that your growing business will need. You may have developed a perfectly serviceable site for the time being, but eventually you will outgrow it. The more your business develops, the more features and functionality you will want and need to implement to carry out your marketing plans. Having a provider that can accommodate your ongoing website and marketing needs is key to continued growth.
Hosting and Design Work Together
All of the elements involved in a website-hosting, content development, and marketing-should work together smoothly. Websites are flexible tools that should be designed to fit your needs, not one size fits all. The overall website design and architecture should provide a framework for future updates, additions and enhancements. The last thing you should have to worry about or anticipate is changing providers or redesigning a website each time your company achieves a new level of success.
Design and Marketing Work Together
Along with an organized website presentation and appealing visual design, visitors to your website should be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. If you are engaging in any on- or off-line marketing, such as direct mail flyers, e-newsletters, search engine optimization (SEO), or Pay-Per Click (PPC) advertising, these should be well-integrated into your website. Graphics and colors should match and be continuous throughout the site. The site structure should allow the site user to be taken directly to the page containing the information they are looking for, rather than having to stumble through the entire site to find the page they saw the information about in your newsletter.
This type of desirable usability requires a design team and a marketing team that coordinate with each other. The marketing team can give the design team tips on creating effective page titles and keyword-rich content. The design team can set the site up for easy PPC campaign creation, with good landing pages for certain top keywords. A compatible design and marketing team ensures that all branding elements-graphics, logos, color scheme, typefaces and fonts, style elements-carry a single, clear message throughout your on- and off-line content. Imagine how much more you and your website can accomplish if your design team needs only to walk across the hall to ask a question of the marketing team!
Easier For You
Aside from the aforementioned benefits, when you're working with just one company for a variety of needs, you can really get to know them. They know your business inside and out, because they have worked with you to develop every aspect of your business and branding. When you've chosen a company like HEROweb Marketing and Design that has a culture of high-quality customer service, you can be assured that they are looking out for you. If you have competing vendors, calling one about a problem will likely mean having to call each of your other vendors to ensure that the solution Vendor A is proposing will be compatible with Vendor B. And if there's a problem, there's less incentive to make it right, when there's three other companies that can potentially be "blamed" for the ineffectiveness of a strategy.
If Vendor A is reliant upon Vendor B to implement a solution, you may be stuck in limbo, waiting for Vendor B to finish before Vendor A can proceed. If one company is doing it all, they won't stay in business unless they can provide high-quality services to their clients, so there's a real incentive to provide you with solutions that work. You benefit from the conscientious service and convenience of having one committed team working in your best interests.
There are many companies and strategies that you can choose from for your website needs. Developing a successful website is hard enough without dealing with competing vendor agendas and unreliable companies that don't get the job done right the first time. Choose the company that does it all, and does it right.
With some things, having different service providers makes perfect sense. You go to a mechanic's shop for a broken transmission, and a tire shop when your car gets a flat. A carpet cleaning company can certainly keep your floors clean, but that's not who you would hire when your walls need painting. The big difference between these examples and service providers for a website is that the carpet cleaner and house painter don't need to be able communicate with each other in order to complete their work and do a good job. Many web-related service providers specialize in only one area of website design, marketing or tech support, which means you are left navigating many different vendors when you need service in different areas.
High Conversion Rates Rely on a Strong Team
Without good website usability, your conversion rate suffers. Online shoppers who find a website confusing or difficult to navigate-maybe due to slow-loading pages, broken links, error messages, cumbersome shopping cart check-out, lack of a search function, etc-will simply leave the site. Navigation should be clear, information should be easy to find, and the check-out process simple and secure. In general, poor website design leads to a poor user experience that results in more shopping cart abandonments and bounces from the site-all result in a smaller bottom line for you.
When you need a website, or a redesign of an existing site, the designer makes their own decisions based (often, primarily) on good looks, with usability sometimes taking a back seat. But an Internet marketing company will have very different ideas about how the content should be presented on a website with regard to user experience and search engine optimization. Most Internet marketing firms have limited technical expertise, while most data management and development firms have limited knowledge about marketing. The hosting company will not be able to answer your questions about how the functionality of your website will impact your Internet marketing plans.
Don't Be Hampered By Competing Agendas
When you choose different providers for your data services, web marketing and design, you are left dealing with competing and often conflicting agendas of multiple vendors. A typical scenario for a website owner shopping for services involves navigating several different providers and many suggestions and great ideas that either never get implemented or are rendered ineffective when everybody puts in their two cents. Imagine each of these different companies calling and emailing each other, and calling and emailing you, and you calling and emailing each in turn, before any decision can be implemented. You're paying for that time, in more ways than one. As a site owner, you either need different firms that have shown through previous client testimonials that they can work well together, or one firm that has the range of expertise necessary to accomplish each of these tasks efficiently and effectively.
Over the 15 years that the team at HEROWeb Marketing and Design have been in this industry as an ecommerce platform provider, we have conscientiously chosen to develop each of these complementary services, because we view having in-house access to all website needs as critical for a site owner's success. As a new site owner, it may be hard to see into the future and imagine the scalable services that your growing business will need. You may have developed a perfectly serviceable site for the time being, but eventually you will outgrow it. The more your business develops, the more features and functionality you will want and need to implement to carry out your marketing plans. Having a provider that can accommodate your ongoing website and marketing needs is key to continued growth.
Hosting and Design Work Together
All of the elements involved in a website-hosting, content development, and marketing-should work together smoothly. Websites are flexible tools that should be designed to fit your needs, not one size fits all. The overall website design and architecture should provide a framework for future updates, additions and enhancements. The last thing you should have to worry about or anticipate is changing providers or redesigning a website each time your company achieves a new level of success.
Design and Marketing Work Together
Along with an organized website presentation and appealing visual design, visitors to your website should be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. If you are engaging in any on- or off-line marketing, such as direct mail flyers, e-newsletters, search engine optimization (SEO), or Pay-Per Click (PPC) advertising, these should be well-integrated into your website. Graphics and colors should match and be continuous throughout the site. The site structure should allow the site user to be taken directly to the page containing the information they are looking for, rather than having to stumble through the entire site to find the page they saw the information about in your newsletter.
This type of desirable usability requires a design team and a marketing team that coordinate with each other. The marketing team can give the design team tips on creating effective page titles and keyword-rich content. The design team can set the site up for easy PPC campaign creation, with good landing pages for certain top keywords. A compatible design and marketing team ensures that all branding elements-graphics, logos, color scheme, typefaces and fonts, style elements-carry a single, clear message throughout your on- and off-line content. Imagine how much more you and your website can accomplish if your design team needs only to walk across the hall to ask a question of the marketing team!
Easier For You
Aside from the aforementioned benefits, when you're working with just one company for a variety of needs, you can really get to know them. They know your business inside and out, because they have worked with you to develop every aspect of your business and branding. When you've chosen a company like HEROweb Marketing and Design that has a culture of high-quality customer service, you can be assured that they are looking out for you. If you have competing vendors, calling one about a problem will likely mean having to call each of your other vendors to ensure that the solution Vendor A is proposing will be compatible with Vendor B. And if there's a problem, there's less incentive to make it right, when there's three other companies that can potentially be "blamed" for the ineffectiveness of a strategy.
If Vendor A is reliant upon Vendor B to implement a solution, you may be stuck in limbo, waiting for Vendor B to finish before Vendor A can proceed. If one company is doing it all, they won't stay in business unless they can provide high-quality services to their clients, so there's a real incentive to provide you with solutions that work. You benefit from the conscientious service and convenience of having one committed team working in your best interests.
There are many companies and strategies that you can choose from for your website needs. Developing a successful website is hard enough without dealing with competing vendor agendas and unreliable companies that don't get the job done right the first time. Choose the company that does it all, and does it right.
