Doing It Wrong

I just had to blog about this one...

On our way back from a client meeting this morning, I saw a big billboard in a prime location for a local builder - one I really haven't heard of before. I get back to the office and look up their site... oh my! They should not even have a website up - seriously.

The page titles are set as "Untitled Document" of course. So when people would find them in Google (like Google would list that site), that is the text that's linked and what people would click on to go to that site. As if anyone would think that site is what they're looking for.

The images on the page were not resized but instead scaled down. They come in really slowly because we have to load a 3000 pixel wide image that's only showing at 200 pixels wide. Shame, shame! (We teach our clients how to do this the right way in our CMS classes)

It looks like they just slapped their logo on the top of a generic design.

Most pages are "under construction" which is ironic since they're a construction company (ok, that made me laugh out loud).

I mean, why would you spend $10k on a billboard ad to send people to your website for more information when the website is maybe 10% done and not really good enough to promote? That's doing it wrong. Either put up a page with your contact information and say that it's coming soon or put up a good website.

You only get 1 chance for a first impression! That is how important website design and your online presentation is. It's 2009 now and it's time to step it up and do it right.

For less than $3k, you can get a really nice, starter website that's set up properly.

I don't like to pick on bad website design and that's not our attitude here. We're happy to see that people do want to get their business online - that's great. We like helping people do that, too. But that first impression is so important and with more and more businesses putting up a website, it simply isn't enough to just have a website. It has to stand out and work the right way. If not, people will move on to your competition since your competition is just a click a way.

-Tony

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