Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Hi Lew,

I've worked with DevBridge (www.devbridge.com) to develop most of my websites, including aircycle.com, lamprecycling.com and conceptfeedback.com. They're out of Chicago and do good work - a solid mix of design and technology experience.

Speaking of Concept Feedback (www.conceptfeedback.com), you may want to check it out. You can use it to get expert feedback on your current site, including ideas to help you improve usability and increase conversions. I'd recommend doing something like this now so you can come up with a solid spec before you start gathering estimates.

Good luck!

Andrew Follett

I've worked with Trafficdeveloper.com on quite a few sites, and can recommend them highly. The name tells you that they started ten years ago with a focus on Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, but they have an excellent team of about ten people with varied skills -- designers, programmers, database, multimedia and of course pay-per-click and SEO. Full disclosure: after hiring them for numerous projects, I am now doing SEO for them. Not quite the old "I liked the product so much I bought the company" but close!

As to budget, the standard answer is, "It depends." If you have deep pockets and need the prestige of a brandname firm, you can spend half a million. (Your examples of sites you like are $billion+ companies in that category.) Or if you had a huge database and many legacy encrustments that you just had to carry over, even a non-brand name firm could run you low 6 figures. But if your needs are less complex than that, and it sounds to me that they aren't too bad (from your question and a glance at your site), then $50k would be on the high side, and it could be half that.

I strongly recommend Barak Hosting (www.barakhosting.com) - a premium company that specializes in (besides hosting) custom web sites from small to very large database-integrated sites. We use their services exclusively because we've tried others with minimal success , yet Barak always deliver on-time, at budget, and are flexible and reliable.

They are also good at redeveloping sites and projects that need refreshing or another company has left the owner hanging mid-project. Barak, a $45 million company based in Florida, also provides domains, cell phone applications, medical end-to-end work flow process systems, real estate MLS sites, and SEO / PPC. They use the latest coding for all projects.

I agree that an appropriately-sized design spec. is is needed to guide the project and expectations.

Our company, AdsValue (www.adsvalue.com) is a value-added affiliate with Barak and has completed many projects together. We add value as a personalized single point project developer / customer advocate, design creativity (no template sites), site management, documentation, testing, and advertising services. We don't just "take an order" - we try to understand your business and suggest features you might need and hadn't considered.

AdsValue is also a business process specialist that can design and document your new site. or just the changes you desire. The AdsValue / Barak team is tough to beat.

Please contact AdsValue through the profile for further information and / or immediate resources for defining and completing your site refresh.

Sincerely,

Bob Bleau
President, AdsValue

Of course you need a website you can be proud of, but you might also think about how visitors to your site find you and direct more attention to landing path experiences that are focused on specific needs, sources and market segments.

The more relevant your content is to what the site visitors need and expect, the more likely they are to respond to your call-to-action. And since there are many sub-segments of that audience, you really should not try to serve them all with the same "generic" homepage and web experience.

I know this doesn't address your question directly, but it may shade the specs in your Creative Brief for whomever designs the site.

I've had very good experience dealing with message match between the various sources/ad content and the landing pages (and then the rest of the website). Treating the website in isolation will almost certainly compromise the conversion results -- kind of a sub-optimization dilemma ... a single website that's not-quite-right for everyone.

If you want to discuss this further, feel free to send me an email message. Just use the contact info in my profile.