It’s hard to believe that websites and by extension web design is only about 25 years old – at least as a profession. What is even more difficult to realise is that website design has changed so much in such a short time. Even the meaning of what composes a website has been modified to include what just two years ago were off site extensions. Social media pages such as YouTube, Facebook, WordPress and Pinterest are embedded into the main pages of a site. As a result of all this innovation, the complexity of designing an interactive website requires professional know-how and experience.
Web Design is no longer just a matter of creating a set series of pages – home, about, product summary, service summary and contact pages. These are the bare bones of a personal or business site that could be done using a template on a hosting site. Unfortunately, this collection of pages is inadequate to gain recognition and ranking on search engines, which in turn means that fewer people will know that you or your organisation exist. For a personal website, this may not be all that detrimental. However, if you operate a business and want your business to become or remain successful, it is vital that your website has a virtual presence.
For a small business just getting started, the value of custom web design is more important than it is for medium and large corporations. The internet is the first and only medium designed to assist the growth of small to medium businesses. For large and multinational corporations, the virtual world is a cumbersome and difficult place to do business. But, as more and smaller business organisations began to make inroads in these companies’ profit margins, they had to find a way to adjust to it. None-the-less, they are still at a disadvantage.
Many business owners fail to consider the advantages that a smaller organisation has over big businesses in a virtual environment. Because everything on the web moves at the speed of light, including the methods of reaching consumers, flexibility is vital. For a small to the medium operation, modifying a website can be done in a matter of a few hours or days. For a multinational organisation, the same modifications take weeks and months.
A small business can put up a notice, send out a tweet for a customer appreciation sale that will take place that afternoon or resolve customer service issues in a matter of hours. Small and medium businesses can put up videos of their workers that let customers know who they are and develop customer loyalty. Large operations cannot do this. Choosing an experienced web design firm that knows how to implement those inroads into the customer base of your large competitors means greater success for your operation.
