We spoke to a potential client this week who was sold a website design following a tele-sales call. They paid £180 to have a basic website for their company.
Six months later they still have not had the website produced for them and their domain name resolves to a hosting company sponsored listings page.
They then told us that their fleet of vans has the website address emblazened in very large letters. We explained that if a potential customers sees their website address and then goes to check out their website to see what the company does, where they are located or even just to grab their telephone number to get in touch, it’s a potential lost customer. Any person looking at this website, or more accurately hosting company sponsored listings page would rightly assume the company may no longer be in business - particularly in this current unstable economic climate where small to medium sized businesses are going to the wall with frightening frequency.
We explained that we could design an effective but reasonable priced website for them, within just a few days, although we did state that £180 was not a feasible price - companies purporting to be able to produce websites for this kind of money are not running sustainable businesses.
We would certainly not leave a client with a sponsored listings page when their web address is being actively marketed in such a prominent way to the public and would immediately put up a company holding page that at the very least gives contact details while the site is being built.
We await to hear back from this potential client who was genuinely appreciative of our honest and valuable website and marketing advice.
