Thinking about launching a website for your business? St. Louis web design services vary in scope and level of service. Here’s what you need to think about.
These days almost every business can benefit from a website. Even if you have a brick-and-mortar store or a sales process built on referrals, customers and prospects expect you to have a digital presence.
St. Louis web design services vary from expensive custom web design companies to cheap, do-it-yourself options like SquareSpace or solutions offered by web hosting providers like Frontier.
Anderson Technologies, a St. Louis web design company, falls in the middle. It caters to small businesses that need professional websites but want to avoid the cost of complicated custom builds. These companies want to focus on their clients and don’t have the desire, time, or expertise to tinker with do-it-yourself web design tools.
If you are building a website for the first time, or updating an existing one, it is important to realize that it is a process, whether you go it alone or with a partner.
The Importance of Discovery
A website is often a business’s first impression. At the very least, it is a digital representation of your brand. It’s important that it accurately represents your company and conveys the right message to your audience.
Farica Chang, director at Anderson Technologies, explains that she kicks off every web design project with a general discussion in which she asks important questions to understand the client’s general design aesthetic, likes and dislikes, main messaging, and goals for the site.
“Every client is different. We want to take the right direction from the beginning, rather than discovering a major issue in the middle of the development process,” she explains. The initial conversations make creating a digital presence easier for everyone and ensures clients end up with a site that serves their objective.
Kelley Vonarx, CEO, Operations & Marketing, of VonArx Engineering, a civil and structural engineering firm based in St. Louis, recently partnered with Anderson Technologies to build her company’s first website. “Most of our competitors and colleagues have a website, so we wanted to be right there with them,” she explains. “A lot of our work comes from referrals, but personally, even if I get a referral from someone, I still get on the internet to check out the company before I do business with them.”
When choosing a St. Louis web design services partner, Vonarx notes the importance of picking someone you have a good rapport with. “Working with Farica, the whole process was really easy. She made it that way!”
Vonarx says the discovery meeting was valuable, and that Chang’s questions helped her think about things she otherwise wouldn’t have. “Then we watched things come to fruition. We got to see a mockup of the homepage, which was really exciting. Throughout the whole process, we communicated with Farica. We would share information, and she would give suggestions and make sure we were on track,” she says.
The end result was even better than Vonarx expected: “We are a small company so doing something like this was big for us. Seeing it launch was really exciting and even better than we thought it would be.”
The Benefits of a Professional Web Design Partner
For many small businesses, especially those without tech experience, it makes sense to find a St. Louis web design service that is a “friendly medium between custom development and doing something by yourself,” says Chang.
She explains that although Anderson Technologies has resources with deep technical knowledge and custom web design, development, and hosting capabilities, it also leverages third-party platforms like WordPress, which make it easy to build sites without starting from the ground-up. This saves clients time and money.
Vonarx “highly recommends” partnering with a web design expert to save time and improve quality. She has strong tech skills, including experience with HTML, but when Vonarx experimented with a free do-it-yourself tool before reaching out to a vendor, she wasn’t happy with the results.
Another advantage to partnering with a web design expert is that it should ensure your site is optimized for performance so it loads quickly. Your developer should keep search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, meaning the site content is Google-friendly so people can more easily find it. A professional St. Louis web design partner should also always make sure your website functions properly across all devices and screen sizes, from mobile phones and tablets to desktop computers.
Are you thinking about creating a website for your business? Anderson Technologies is a St. Louis web design company that specializes in providing friendly web design and development services that don’t break the bank. We work to make the process simple and even fun! For more information on our services, email info@andersontech.com or call 314.394.3001 today.
