C2C Consulting has not spent a penny on advertising since its inception. All of our business comes through referrals, and we ARE proud of that fact. The breakdown between website rebuilds, and new websites is heavily slanted to the rebuild side of the ledger. Over the years we hear it all, as to the reason folks are coming to us to rebuild and manage their site. Now, a bit of background information you need to keep in mind is, these are company sites. I'm not referring to a site that an individual(s) develop and publish to communicate along the lines of some hobby they are passionate about, or a family site used to publish pictures and news from the various holidays. These are commercial sites, on to the horror stories. These are actual quotes from some of our clients, although I changed the names to protect the innocent.
"I want to be able to sell goods and services on my site. I don't think my current web person knows how to do that. I called her three weeks ago, and she told me she would have to get back to me. I haven't heard from her since."
"Jimmy created this site. He was the person who maintained it. He left the company, and no one here knows anything about how to do it. We have been unable to bring the information up to date for eight months. We don't sell some of these products now, and the pricing is all different for the ones we do."
"Our sites are being blocked on the search engines because they were hacked and injected with spyware links, and we can't get a hold of our web guy. I've had several calls in to him for days, and no return calls."
"My sister's son made our site. Now, he's off to college and doesn't have time to help us with it."
"My partner made our website one night for less than $10. We can't see where it's helping our business at all."
I could go on and on. There is a common theme with all, "Don't trust your business website to anyone who is not a professional company. A company who is in the business every day of every year, 24/7. There are many very good solutions available that won't break the budget. Think of it this way. Your company is selling goods and services as a professional source in your specific area of expertise. Don't depend on "amateurs" to provide critical services to you.
Top Five Reasons Your Nephew Should Not Build Your Website
5. You don't want to cut into his Facebook time.
4. You don't want to get a late night call from him that starts out, "Dude you're not going to believe what happened on your site!"
3. You don't want to hear him say, "Backup, what's a backup?"
2. You don't want to hear that he and his girlfriend just broke up for any reason.
1. You go to your site and discover it's playing tracks from "The Best of MegaDeath."
As I often say to my friends, "When you go looking for a brain surgeon, don't pick the cheapest one." Think about it.
