Currently in Edmonton you can currently go on Odesk, Upwork or Kijijij and buy a website for about $250. Wow, what a deal right? WRONG! Far too often we help clients who’ve come to us from a terrible experience and wasted money on these ‘great deals’ for their website.
Here are four reasons to hire a local professional company to build your website:
- Communication – web developers can be amazing at what they do and have good website portfolios, but many times we encounter clients who’ve had issues communicating with their developer. People skills are vital to the web development process! The ability to hear the client and understand their needs creates the foundation for the website. Being short-sighted or closed-minded creates walls and results in major frustration. Communication and management of a website project requires a team that hears, designs, creates and produces a high quality product to meet their client’s needs.
- Accountability – hiring a web developer who’s not accountable to a team or company is a high risk move. We require a deposit when starting a website project but we have a stable company with good references. At any time, a web developer could decide to quit the project, take your money and maybe even leave the city. We’ve had clients who lost deposits ranging from $800 up to $13,000 to independent web developers who promised a website but never delivered. A stable, local web design company who meets you face-to-face and has trusted references is worth the investment.
- Product Delivery– when it comes to a website build, timelines are very important to establish for both the client and the developer. A basic website should be produced within 4-6 weeks of the start date. One of our clients made a deposit for work with an independent web developer and waited eight weeks before hearing from them. By that time they didn’t even have a home page design secured. We gave them a discount on their new website and had them up and running in less than a month. Timelines must be laid out clearly so everyone is on the same page and expectations are on the table.
- Professionalism – having an independent web developer create your website can work out. There are some amazing ones out there! However, we’ve often seen they have an inability to provide professional service to a client. One of our clients had tried to contact their web developer several times over the course of a few weeks and did not hear back via phone or email. During a website build, the client wants to be part of the process and should not be kept in the dark. We enable clients to see our progress through a link we give them once the main structure is built and uploaded. They can check in whenever they like and see how things are going.
Website Services Edmonton
In Conclusion
Your website is the front door to your company and the first impression current and future clients will have of you. To us, it makes perfect sense to place a high value on that! Take your time, do some research and probably don’t go for the cheapest option. At Metron, we have a solidified website build process to enable clear communication, website management, creative design and online project boards, ensuring our client’s requests and directives are always met.
