DIY website vs. Local web design firms

Part 1 of many : )
Local Campaigns

We’ve all seen the commercials…..easy, cheap websites….SEO, marketing, customizable, etc. etc. Does it sound too good to be true? Well, it is. 1&1.com appears to be one of the biggest proponents offering websites designs, developments and such, jockeying for position with godaddy.com as far as web hosting top dog goes. Even though the price is always the eye catcher…there is more to meets the eye when it comes to these types of web design and development offers.
1&1.com and companies like it at first seem appealing by low prices and offers, but after some research, it shows that 1&1.com is actually a German and UK based company. This should be the 1st red flag. This means that there are no “feet on the ground” as far as customer service and customization is concerned at the local level. They have no vested interest in your city or neighborhood. How will they be able to truly market for you in the United States? Staffs at these companies will no doubt have limited to no information as to YOUR local business and advertising needs within your community. This will lead to customer service issues, among others, which we will talk about in another blog in this series.
1&1.com and others like them will offer a “cookie-cutter” type of web template or design, that you will be able to customize the look of the website, but will that site contain the proper Meta data, keywords, H1 tags, and descriptions necessary for a proper, localized website, and would you be able to customize those? Good, Locally designed websites will have this information built in correctly, as a business would have most likely met with the Web Design/Development firm who is building, designing, and implementing their particular website. Customization would be at the forefront, which would be an advantage to have when building a website to impact on the local level, say for Buffalo, NY. Choosing a localized web design and development company has benefits that far outweigh what the cost may be at times. For instance, the 1&1.com sites come at a fairly rigid price break down, when a localized firm is far more willing to negotiate a price, reasonable to both parties involved.
Also, with a localized web design firm, you can actually meet, often even, with the firms developers, sales staff, customer service reps, even CEO’s and mangers and discuss everything from initial layout of the website, to SEO, to Social Media, and integrating it all to your website. Can 1&1.com offer that? They may say they do, but to what extent? A final instance, for example, is for technical support. Can 1&1.com and similar groups offer proper technical support? They will offer a tech support number and email, but what is the response time? Will they be able to answer all your questions, or simply follow a script? Having a local web design firm may eliminate that grey area. They can simply have someone stop over to your place of business and conduct an onsite inspection, help those within your place of business troubleshoot what the issue may be, and bring the findings back to the web developers.
These are just a few examples of how a local web development firm is a different choice than a 1&1.com and similar web design offers. We will continue with more discussions on both of these types of web design choices in upcoming blogs. Thank you for reading.