If you are a small to medium business (SMB) owner and have built a website or you are looking for a redesign, you may know the frustrations with the current approach to SMB web design. It’s not because your web designer doesn’t care about your success. They may be using an outdated playbook. Your site should be your best tool to build meaningful and lasting relationships with your customers.

Your website can be an online brochure or it can be your best employee and most impactful marketing strategy. But how do you get the results of the former?

Before I answer that, let me share some of the most common frustrations I hear when talking with people about their current website or why they don’t have a site yet.

1. I’m just starting and don’t know if I have the money to get a good website.

The average cost for a small to medium-sized business website (or website redesign) is $15,000 – $80,000.* Most of the time, your real quote is hidden behind a quote wall or lengthy exchange of emails and meetings, making getting an actual quote time-consuming.

If your website is your most impactful marketing strategy and best employee, you may not be able to afford not to.

2. Isn’t that why I’m paying you?

People feel frustrated after a web design project where their designer asked them what they wanted and built it. The nerve?!

The conversation goes like this “What websites do you like?” Then a game of copy and paste begins.  Then comes the hourly rate for any revisions. If your website’s only job is to look pretty, this may meet your needs.

Initially, that approach may not sound like a bad thing, but here is where it breaks down, most small business owners don’t consider themselves experts in website best practices. They are experts in their business and would prefer assistance to discover an effective way to market themselves based on proven principles over a web designer, yes-man or yes-woman.

3. It takes so long to see progress.

The average time it takes to complete a website redesign is 3-6 months.**

The traditional web design model is totally broken. Whether you’re an agency or business it leaves you extremely vulnerable to project failure and often does not produce optimal results.

~Gabe Wahhab, Director of Interactive Services at Square 2 Marketing

In this graph taken from Growth Driven Design, you can see the traditional approach in blue and an alternative approach in orange.

So back to the question of making sure your website is your best employee and most useful tool in your marketing strategy: change how you approach designing or redesigning your site, and you will improve the results.

Change the way you approach designing or redesigning your site and you will improve the results.

Find a creative agency that helps you create a website around your goals, tracks the user data and refines your strategy regularly by using user data to suggest and make impactful improvements multiple times a year.

42% of small to medium business owners make impactful improvements to their website once or LESS a year.***

Do you think these principles are a fit for you and your business? We would love to give you more info.

*Statistics courtesy of HubSpot