Start gathering quotes for business web design – or any professional service, I suppose – and you’ll notice right away that there will be a general range for professional work, along with a few that seem to be a little too good to be true. But, in this tough economy, the choice is clear, right? Isn’t it smart to save a little money where you can get a great deal when it’s offered?

Before I answer that question, let me point out two very important things. The first is that, in web design and almost any other business, you are highly likely to get what you pay for. And secondly, especially in business web design, what you pay for your project isn’t nearly as important as what you get out of it. In other words, a site that seems a bit more expensive now is a steal later if it ends up doubling your profits.

With that being said, the one thing to pay close attention to in any suspiciously low business web design quote is what’s not being listed.

In other words, are you really getting a great deal, or is it that they’re just taking away the “extras” that are most important to your site?

Here are at least five things that should definitely be included in any business web design quote:

A search engine optimization and marketing plan. It doesn’t matter what your site looks like, or what it does, if no one can find it. Make sure it will be accessible on Google, Yahoo, and Bing at a minimum.

Ongoing service and minor updates. What happens if you need to change a page, or find that you left a typo on your homepage? It’s important to pick a business web design team that will still be there when you need them.

Web hosting. Hosting might seem like a minor detail, but it affects your site speed, performance, stability, and even search engine positioning. Make sure you’re getting a competitive rate for high-quality hosting.

Social media links and profiles. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are more important than ever, and your company is going to suffer if you don’t have a presence on each of them.

An ongoing plan to grow your company online. Remember, your website shouldn’t just be an online brochure, but an important part of your marketing and promotion plan. What is your new business web design company doing to help you make it more successful?

We all like to save money, and it’s tempting to go with the rock-bottom business web design quote. Before you do, however, make sure that you aren’t spending less at the expense of your company’s future.

If you want some of the best Calgary web design and online marketing, contact eKzact Solutions for a free consultation today!

One of the great tragedies in life, and business online, is that nothing lasts forever… and that very few things even last for very long. Get a fantastic haircut, and you’ll quickly find your hair hasn’t stopped growing; buy a wonderful suit, and you’ll notice that it’s only a matter of time before it has to be taken in or out because you’ve either gone on a diet, or need to.

In some ways, it’s the same with your small Calgary business website. Even if you invest in a high-quality design that fits your company perfectly, impresses visitors, loads correctly across all kinds of browsers, and helps your company to make more money, it’s probably going to need to be tweaked or updated eventually.

The good news is that great websites don’t have to be completely replaced very often. In fact, it’s often a matter of just making a few small changes when you need them. Here are a few things you should definitely add or review on your business website, even if you aren’t ready for a major redesign:

Social media links and integration. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you already know that social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are big business. It’s important that you have links to your profiles and content on these sites, since they can make it easier for people to find you outside of your business website, and vice versa.

Search engine optimized pages and content. Moving onto the first or second page of the results for your most important keywords on Google, Yahoo, and Bing can be an enormous boost to your business, but it’s getting harder to improve your search engine rankings all the time. For that reason, it makes sense to review your pages from time to time, to ensure that they’re optimized, and that you are still emphasizing the right keywords and phrases.

Product descriptions and prices. It goes without saying that accuracy, especially in product descriptions and prices, is an important part of the upkeep on your business website. Still, there are a surprising number of companies that regularly fail to keep this kind of data current. Whether you’re using a content management system or not, be sure that your site is up to date.

FAQs, contact information, privacy policies, and other details. More and more, people are basing their online buying decisions on how certain they feel that you’re going to do what you say you will, how quickly they can expect their order, and what they think you’ll do with their personal information. Make it easier for them to buy with clear, customer-friendly details on your business website.

Psychologists will tell you that there are large groups of people who feel overwhelmed by “information overload,” or the ever-growing and expanding amount of data that’s available on the Internet. We regularly meet with small business owners who seem to be suffering from a similar effect – one we might call feature overload – where they aren’t sure which of the “must-have” tools and technologies need to be integrated into their next web design.

In other words, they often aren’t sure exactly how new a new business web design actually has to be in order to be an effective marketing tool.

Even though it might run contrary to a lot of thinking within the industry, we’re going to go out on a limb and say for the record that having the latest and greatest features on your business site isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t get us wrong, there are definitely some fairly-standard features – like a good content management system, social media integration, search engine optimization, etc. – that can make your company more profitable in a hurry. But there are also a lot of things that just add to time and expense of your business site, make it more complicated for people to use, and generally get in the way of good usability.

Good design is classic. The way we code websites might change, but the basic ideas and information that most customers are looking for has remained fairly constant for thousands of years. In other words, you might use an online video to tell a potential buyer what you would have explained in a brochure 10 years ago, but the focus still needs to be on the right message, rather than on any one specific web design tool.

A good, high-quality business web design can easily last 3 to 5 years before it needs any major changes. If you find that you’re needing to redesign your business website a lot more often than not, it could be that you aren’t investing in quality layouts to start with, or are being too distracted by small changes, rather than concentrating on your most important business goals.

Having a new website for your company can be very exciting, but having one that helps you make more money month after month is usually a lot more rewarding.