If you’re running a small business, you’ll know that a website is pretty vital for you. There are very few businesses that can thrive in the modern environment without a web presence, which means having a website is vital. So is having the right website – and many small businesses hire web designers in order to get theirs up and running. You can run into problems, however. If web design isn’t your area of expertise, how do you make sure that the web designer you hire is right for you?

Define Your Needs

A web designer knows their business. You know yours. You know what your customers need, so you know what needs to be on your website. You can carry out your own research by asking your employees, your peers and your customers what they want from a website, and you can look at examples of websites from other companies in your line of work.

A good web designer will value your input and use your expert knowledge of your business. Not all businesses need a complicated or highly interactive website – sometimes simple is better. You will probably always need:

A home page
An “about us” page
An “Our Services” page
A “Contact Us” page
A Testimonials page
An Event Page

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but you will know better than your web designer if you need anything more!

Know Your Budget

You don’t want to cut corners with your website, as a good website will work wonders for your business. Equally, though, you don’t want to spend money that you don’t need to. Find out what the service costs of your website will be, and don’t forget to ask your web designer how much value they think the website will bring to your business. Like https://www.igoweb.co.uk/website-design, who do web design in South Devon, they should be able to support their answers with concrete examples. There are more suggestions about choosing a web designer here http://www.wikihow.com/Choose-a-Website-Design-Company.

Ask for Proof

You shouldn’t just take anyone at their word these days. Ask to see samples of your web designer’s work. Have they worked with other businesses like yours? Do they have testimonials? Have they got proof that their website gets traffic and improves custom? If they can’t or don’t want to refer you to previous clients, you should use somebody else.

When it comes to entering the world of marketing, it seems that many graduates aren’t totally prepared for working in the real world. Here are some things that you should know before you enter the professional world of marketing.

1) Don’t be afraid of numbers.

The temptation in higher education is to avoid the things you don’t like much, like numbers. However, marketing will require the use of analytics and statistics so stop avoiding those statistics lectures. Even if you plan on just working with social media marketing, you will still be looking at charts, graphs and spreadsheets and interpreting and analysing what it all means.

2) Nothing beats experience learned on the job

Work scenarios can be simulated whilst learning but you won’t learn to make important decisions in tight time frames until there is real money involved and a real corporate reputation to uphold. There is nothing quite like the experience gained from real life projects. Getting an internship can help with ‘being there and doing it’ experience.

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3) Having a standard CV doesn’t represent modern marketing

Marketing is constantly evolving and so is buyer behavior. That means that the way make your entrance into this evolving industry should be changing, too. Create your own CV template and make sure that it highlights your uniqueness and is set up to show what your value is. You need to be visible where employers are looking and with 89% of recruiters saying they have hired someone through LinkedIn, make sure your CV is all the right places. For Web Design Essex https://webwax.co.uk/.

4) Marketing is a balance of science, art and technology

Many marketing curriculums focus on the art. You craft advertising campaigns, brainstorm billboards, and storyboard commercials. In modern marketing, this art is critical in visualizing calls-to-actions, writing landing page copy and launching products. But there is much more to it than that as marketing can be very data-driven and technology needs to be incorporated into modern marketing. Being tech savvy will help you to stand out.

5) Toughen up

To be successful in the world of marketing, you’ll have to deal with complaining customers, unresponsive sales reps and frustrating clients, for example. Through it all, you have to bite your tongue and let them feel like they are always right. You’ll need to take all negative feedback as constructive criticism and turn it into something positive.

6) Never burn bridges

You never know who you might end up working with. People who you’ve come across and not gone on well with may end up being your co-worker or even your manager one day. Worst case scenario – they might be on the recruiting panel!

7) Network with everyone

It might sound corny but this is really important and you need to network with everyone. If you decide you want to work at a certain company, don’t only find ways to talk to people from that company. There might be many other connections that all reach to the same destination. Get to know as many people as possible as you don’t know who could help you out in the future.

Due to the massive growth of the internet, there are now numerous ways that business can be conducted online. Having an internet business allows skilled people to offer their expertise to a much wider geographical area or to make money by selling merchandise. Internet business ventures will most definitely need the development of a strong and effective website where visitors can go to make purchases or obtain information.  Continue reading What is eCommerce? →