New Website – Pay Peanuts and Get Monkeys
February 2nd, 2009 // 1:44 pm @ Fox
All small business owners want to save money where possible. This is only natural as every penny counts when you are trying to keep your head above water in an economical crisis and you are just a small affair with limited funds.
Rather than going for the cheapest possible solution you can find, you are better looking for value for money and a return on your investment. Your first venture into the online environment is a big decision and can easily turn into a mitigated disaster.
An example that comes to mind is a small business where I quoted on a solution but the owner wanted to look for a cheaper quote. I have no problem with that. Everyone should shop around and research before making a decision.
The requirements were for a business website with content management system for the staff to upload images, specials and other copy, functionality for newsletter subscriptions and all other associated needs such as hosting.
This business owner found a company in India that built the website for a low cost. The end result was a basic site with no content management system and no hosting. The site is poorly coded in Dreamweaver with lots of tables for layout. The business owner frantically hunted around for hosting and found a cheap solution in the US.
So what is the problem?
The customers for this particular small business are basically local at a regional level, with a smattering of interstate customers, but all within Australia. The website was supposed to be aimed at the Australian customer. With no direction or strategy, the domain was registered as a .com and the hosting is in the US. As far as Google or any other search engine is concerned, this is an American business. It does not appear in local search and will now not be visible to the Australian customers looking for this service. It will only appear on a global search and only for the business name. Of course, Webmaster tools allows geographic targeting, but the India company failed to offer any advice and the business owner does not know this.
Has this business wasted their money? Time will tell. Most likely this business owner will come to the conclusion that the Internet does not enhance business and having a website did not make any difference to turnover. A golden opportunity has been missed.
A saying that I heard my mother say comes to mind here:
Pay peanuts and get monkeys