Tips for Building a Compelling Web Site

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Wendy Cook

Is your current website still living in the “online brochure” days or even non-existent? Don’t dwell on what’s been holding you up. Let’s move your site – and you along with it – into the 21st century.

Why bother?

Early websites served as online duplicates of your company brochure, as flat as the paper they were replacing. The clever among us have developed far more powerful tools – blogs, newsfeeds, social media networking, apps and mobile displays – to build compelling virtual extensions of your personal relationships. These days, using your online presence as no more than a shelf on which to display your business cards is like hiring Arnold Schwarzenegger to open a tight jar for you.

A contemporary, well-built site enables you to interact more deeply and regularly with your clients, prospects and other important relationships. At the same time, we all know that the Internet can be a serious time drain. You must manage it, rather than the other way around.

It all begins with building or upgrading to a carefully planned, contemporary website to serve as the sun around which the rest of your social media universe orbits. Just as you start with a strong investment policy statement to guide your clients’ financial planning, you should design your site according to your goals and then proceed sensibly and deliberately from there. (A few deep breaths to calm yourself along the way couldn’t hurt, either.)

Considering costs

Because your website is so core to your communications platform, there’s no better place to spend a good chunk of your marketing budget. Investing in a good website is the equivalent of pouring a strong, quality foundation for your home. Go too cheap, and everything else you do winds up on shaky ground.

Web development services vary widely in terms of what you can achieve for what price. If your budget is modest, take heart! There are still some good services that, properly managed, can help you incorporate the most essential qualities of a contemporary website.

For example, for the budget-conscious, a couple of advisor-centric solutions include Advisor Websites and MIAGD. There are other advisor-centric services, and they may be equally up to the task. These are the two I’ve worked with the most, have had relatively good experiences with, and have heard others speak well of too. Costs range from several hundred to a few thousand dollars, plus modest monthly support and/or hosting fees in the range of $20-$60.

If your budget allows you to go with a high-end designer as part of your site development, it can be an excellent use of your resources. In this category, there are so many possibilities it’s hard to list just a couple. In general, reasonable pricing is in the range of $4,000-$6,000 for an initial build, plus the same modest monthly support and/or hosting fees as with an off-the-shelf development service. If a service costs more than that, you may want to closely explore whether you’re getting added value for the added cost.

Why spend more on a high-end service? To put it bluntly, a cheap site is going to look cheap. If you’re Berkshire Hathaway, or Phil Demuth, you can get away with a modest website. But most of us mere mortals will want to upgrade the polish of our online presence as we grow. In fact, if you’re a confident risk-taker, you may even want to adopt the Wayne Gretzky philosophy and expend the extra resources to “skate to where the puck is going to be.” By building a site that is a bit grander than the current reality of your firm’s business development, you may get there faster for real.