As you would imagine, there's hundreds of things that determine how well your website is built. Just like there's hundreds of things that determine how well a construction project is done, or how well a home is built. But the one we're focusing on today is the a's marketing perspective.

What's a marketing-perspective? Well, if your website talks about how awesome your are, and not about what you do to help your customers, your website isn't marketing-focused. When you understand people pretty much want to hear "What's in it for me?" you understand why that's important.

Consider who should you hire to design and build your website.

The difference between hiring an IT firm or a web design company

There's lots of differences between having an IT firm (or your neighbor's kid) vs. having a website design company build your website. Here's some  basic things you should consider:

• IT firms are focused on technology, not marketing, so their approach will be to say how awesome your company is. By the same token, if you see a web design company's site that talks about them, and now how they make their client's websites help with their business, that web design firm isn't marketing-focused either.
• IT folks don't know about Search Engine Optimization (also called "SEO," which is what helps your website show up well on a Google search).
• Just so happens, many web design firms don't know about SEO, so make sure you find one who shows up on page 1 of Google for "web design company in (your city)"
• Web design firms know what Google's ranking factors are and build those into your website. For example, the fact Google is looking at the mobile version of your website to determine how worthy it is of ranking well. So even though everyone else is looking at the desktop version of your website, Google is focusing on the mobile version. And the fact that load speed (especially on the mobile version) is a ranking factor.

These bullet points just touch the surface of good web design. SEO itself can take up multiple blog posts, which coincidentally, we've also blogged extensively about.)

Two simple tests to find A good web designer...

To tell if a web design firm is marketing-focused, just take a look at their website:

• If their site is about how awesome they are, and not about what they do to help your business, they're not marketing-focused.
• If they say they do SEO, don't take their word for it. Lots of web design companies says they do SEO, but to see if they're any good, Google the phrase "(Your city) web design company" and see if they show up.

Yep, we've tried that. Didn't work...

Most of the time, the reason a marketing channel didn't work isn't because the marketing channel didn't work, but more likely because the execution wasn't so good.

One prospect of ours said they tried social media and isn't for them. When we asked about it in more detail, turns out they've done it randomly.

Some clients have said direct mail or advertising didn't work well for them. Then, when we review their direct mail or advertising efforts, we can explain why those efforts might not have worked. See our direct mail section here, and our advertising section here.

If your website isn't how you get business....

...then you probably just have a bad website, because we know from personal experience, a good website gets you new business.

In closing...

You can see there's quite a bit to think about when it comes to picking a company to do your website. What we've found is, most folks don't know the right questions to ask, so they end up with a designer who might not be the right match. See this list of questions to ask any web design firm here.

If you do your research, you'll find the right Columbus web design firm to help you with your company's website.