Why Hire a Web Design Company or Agency in London Ontario to Build Your Website?

For decades we have been telling organizations that a website is important, however, with the new COVID-19/Coronavirus pandemic its priority has changed from a nice business asset to have to being essential.

On April 5, 2020 Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government required most Ontario companies to go from having customers be able to freely browse the shelves or meet clients in person, to being completely closed off to the public. At this point there are no hard dates for when these restrictions will be eased or lifted. The reduction or elimination of income has caused some organizations to be evicted or seek creditor protection (aka bankruptcy). Business experts believe up to 40% of small businesses may not survive. Here are some of the options remaining to companies to continue operating in these situations:

1. If they are a retail business that was lucky enough to print catalogs beforehand, they can have customers using those catalogs call them to place orders. The disadvantage of this is it is expensive and only applies to your customers who received a catalog before the shutdown. If you did not have the foresight to print catalogs beforehand then this option creates running expensive advertising. We recommend newspaper ads or flyers. These allow you to pace your sales team and your phone system so that it won’t get overwhelmed with orders that might happen with radio or television advertising.
2. Having customers call them and have a conversation about what items they think they might need from their memory of past visits to the store or from them trying to guess if your store carries that type of item. The advantage of this approach is that it has low capital costs and it allows your salespersons full control over every sales interaction. The disadvantage is that it is very labor-intensive. In a business climate that has high labor costs, this approach for smaller ticket items can mean that the cost of the phone conversation can be higher than the margin you would make on selling the product. Another advantage for professional service providers like lawyers or plumbers is that this is often the way that they normally conducted their first client interactions.
3. This option expands on option number two, but with a twist. You can create sell sheets, print them off and post them in the front window of your retail store. Customers can then call you and ask about placing an order for these in demand products. This approach has the advantages of still having low capital requirements and can make more efficient use of your salespersons, as people now have product suggestions for what they might want to order. The disadvantages are that many retail businesses don’t have clear front windows anymore. Due to escalating utility costs many retail stores have had to paint over their windows or use films on their windows to reduce the amount of light absorbed by the building during the summer months. Some stores may try to get around this by putting the sell sheets outside the door. However this would result in them having to be reprinted every single time it rained or if they got torn due to a strong breeze. If the business gets busy social distancing may become an issue. Also this option will likely not work for professional service providers.
4. Having a Facebook page or local citation (Yelp or Hotfrog). This is another low cost option. All three platforms mentioned above will let you have a web page on their site for free. If money is tight then saving the annual $25 cost for website domain and the $60 to $100 for web hosting will be beneficial. These platforms let you take advantage of their audiences. Facebook, YouTube, Kijiji/Craigslist, and eBay all let you siphon off some of their popularity for your company. You can get your customers to like these pages, so that they can receive updates from you in the future. They are great starter platforms. They are designed to be easily set up and can often be done by business owners with little knowledge of digital marketing. Facebook and Hotfrog platforms let you post products and offers to your customers. One disadvantage is that these platforms are hard to back up. Kijiji ads once they are deleted are gone. If you use these platforms we suggest keeping an ongoing text file or MS Word document with all of your content so that you can reuse it on other digital platforms in the future. Another disadvantage is since they control them they can change the rules. Examples of this are Instagram claiming ownership to all pictures uploaded to their platform (including National Geographic’s) and the ability to close your page for violating their rules (killing off all of your likes/subscribers).
5. Having your own website. Tim Hodges has worked in the retail sector for 18 years and marketing for 16 years. In his experienced opinion nothing can beat the power of a website. This option, now thanks to COVID-19/Coronavirus, has the unique advantage of being the method “strongly encouraged” by the Ontario Progressive Conservative government. Building a website can be one of the most expensive options, but it will provide you with the ultimate presence online. By having your own website domain it means that you’re establishing a more permanent place on the Internet. This site is in effect a 24/7 digital salesperson that can sell your products and services day or night. Think of it as a digital storefront. If you are a retail store, thanks to e-Commerce your site can become an online store. This lets you recover the initial investment cost of a website. Run a dental or law practice? A website can be set up to allow patients or clients to book appointments without the need of a receptionist. You will have complete control over this platform (unlike Facebook, Yelp, or YouTube). Want to add a pop-up for an email newsletter? This can be done. That email newsletter list can be backed up. Now your customer base isn’t limited to the whims of what someone else decides on their platform.
   A website builds credibility. Think about it. What serious business do you know of that doesn’t have a website? Be honest and admit, if you had to make a decision on which business you would trust, would you go with one that just had a Facebook page or one that had a full website?
   
   With a site you can control customer journey. You are in complete control of the process. You are the one who controls the layout, how clients interact with it, and how customers can contact you. It’s your platform. Would you like a video front and centre? That can be done! Citations like Hotfrog and social media like Facebook can’t do that. Your vision has to fit into the mold of their platform. With a website you are not at the whims of Facebook’s changes. If Facebook wants to run ads on your business listing they can. They own it. Take a look at Yelp. Without a costly premium monthly membership they will put ads to your competitors on your Yelp page. If customers are valuable to your company then having a website for your organization is a wise business move.
   
   More and more commerce is being done online. Les Mandelbaum, President of the worldwide powerhouse home décor design firm UMBRA and member of the Marketing Hall of Legends, stated at the March 10, 2020 AMA (American Marketing Association) Toronto chapter event that with Coronavirus he had seen a shift of customers from 15 to 50 percent now shopping online. This wasn’t a short term blip. Les mentioned how 5 years ago Bed, Bath, and Beyond was one of his top 20 customers. Today they aren’t in the top 20. The top 20 is made up of mostly online stores.
   
   If you share the belief that the Internet isn’t a fad, that it isn’t going away soon, then please keep reading.

Why Hire Tim D. Hodges for Your Website Development?

There are plenty of options out there when it comes to web design companies or website developers. Their skills range from high school students that have tried their best to learn this from a book or from spending a few hours watching some YouTube videos, to taking a community college course, to seasoned professionals with years of training and who have experience knowing how market a business. We understand that times are tight. The option you choose may depend on how much money you have left. No one wants to have their star salesperson go out in a stained shirt to be the public face of their organization, however usually something is better than nothing.

We build websites that are designed to make money!

Tim has spent years working in a small office making changes and can hear the success of the phone ringing when things work out. Many new web developers have technical knowledge, but don’t have the business knowledge or wisdom to know what to do. Some dedicated web design firms that crank out sites just copy and paste content with a few free stock images they found online.

We can work with small budgets for basic single page informational sites to premium multi-page websites to e-Commerce stores.

Quality sales copy and content!

We have 16 years of experience creating quality sales copy and content. We will work with your organization to help craft a professional appearance online. This content will also be keyword optimized to increase your chances of getting found through customer searches on Google and Bing. It will be designed to meet our tested guidelines to ensure it doesn’t get marked as spam by Google.

Your website will be found.

Our agency is known for being one of the top SEO agencies in Ontario. As of this writing this site shows up number one for “Ontario SEO expert” and number two for “SEO London Ontario” on Google.ca. Tim has numerous other rankings he shows off in the SEO section.

A website that gives your customer’s what they are looking for.

Our premium websites have the advantage of the structure of the site being laid out by someone who will pour over the search traffic and make suggestions of what web pages will need to be built and which topics that might not be worth creating. This allows your organization to increase the number of terms that your site can rank for. It also focuses your sales copy on what’s relevant to your customer. This improves customer time on site, which is an important ranking factor to Google.

We will work with you to help craft the sales copy.

As you know your industry better than anyone we want to work with you. We combine that with 16 years of copywriting experience to make online selling machines that outperform.

All of our sites include a search engine optimization foundational package.

Basic sites include the setup of title tags and meta descriptions (this is the subtitle you usually see when you do a search on Google). Our premium sites include a bedrock of links that help you get noticed.

Contact us today to see how a premium Tim D. Hodges website can help your business.