battling bunker mentality in a rocky economy

The economy’s trajectory has been far from smooth over these last few months. Shaky confidence in the future is causing many businesses to scale back on marketing budgets, which while it may ease the immediate cash flow concerns of some in management, developing too much of a bunker mentality will make it difficult to bounce back once things get rolling again. Take a minute to review Scott Shane’s post about Four Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make in a Recession. It’s good food for economically-weary thought.

do small businesses really need websites?

Sometimes we’re asked about the need of a site for some of our smallest clients, especially ones who don’t see e-commerce in their future.  Many of our clients are small businesses owners.  These are some of our favorite web design projects because creating a site for a small business can make a tremendous impact on the dynamics of their business.

Perhaps even more than established corporations, small businesses need a quality website.  Corporations have a distinct advantage over their smaller competitors – chiefly established reputations.  The Internet acts as a balancing force, though.  A well-designed site that is both visually appealing and packed with useful content can level a the playing field between small businesses and their corporate competitors.

Even if your small business doesn’t sell Internet-ready products or services, a site is critical.  With so many people heading online to comparison shop before heading out to the store, a good website can “prove” the validity of your small business.  The public needs to see that while your business may be rooted in bricks and mortar, your business is geared to even meet the cyber needs of its customers.  Even if your offices hours are from 10 – 2, a website gives your customers 24/7 access to your business.  Google has a number of Local Search features that feed users information about your business.  If you don’t have a site presence or haven’t registered your business with Google, you’re missing out on customers who are searching for your services.

template vs. custom website design

Why use a custom designed website (and pay more) instead of a template for my website design?

I get this question pretty frequently – and it’s a valid one. For some, templates are the answer. In the last few years, designers have made great strides creating templates that are more appealing and more functional. Templates can be a quick fix when you need a site in a pinch. If you find the right one, creating your site can be cheap and fast.

However, one thing we encourage our clients to consider is not just their needs now, but where do they see their business going in the future? More importantly, how do they see their website keeping pace?

This is one of our main considerations when we begin working on a site. We always design with the future in mind. On more than one occasion a client has come to us in need of a basic, informative site. Within a year of their site’s launch they’ve returned to us with new ideas and updates for their site: e-commerce features, community forums, live chat, user info capture and more. Since we’ve designed the site with the client’s next steps in mind, we’ve always been able to easily integrate the new phases and features into the site without losing the integrity and groundwork that the client has already put into their site.

A custom-designed site grows with your business unlike any mass-marketed template. The ability of a site to meet your needs along each step is essential for every growing business, and that’s a consideration that is far more valuable than any quick fix solution.

Brady and Crew are on the Scene

There’s a lot of conversation that goes on in our office. Sometimes it’s heavy with coding and programming speak, other times it’s light and breezy with marketing jabber. Instead of keeping these pearls of wisdom or pondering questions to ourselves, we thought it best to get out there and share with the rest of the world.

Brady Mills Graphics and Interactive Marketing is, well, an interactive marketing firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. We work in web design, SEO, online advertising, copywriting and a whole host of other areas. We’ve got a backload of topics that we’ll be posting in these next few days and weeks. Once all those topics have loaded we’ll adapt a more routine posting schedule.

We hope that you’ll find what we have to say entertaining and useful – regardless of whether you’re a prospective client, a keen competitor or just a visitor in blogland.

Thanks for visiting and let us know what you think!

– Brady and Crew

http://www.bradymills.com