You wouldn’t ask a carpenter to do the work of an electrician or ask an architect to install the plumbing. Each performs the tasks they were trained for, to produce a finished home. So it is with building a website.
Realistically, very few people are proficient in each aspect that launching a website requires: copywriter, designer, programmer, and marketer. Each component is equally important: the copywriter, or content developer, thinks about purpose and audience to craft a compelling message that humans and search engines will understand. The designer uses CSS, graphics, images, and navigation to present the information in a logical and memorable way.
The programmer writes CGIs, Flash applications or Ajax Web 2.0 applications He or she also creates databases that allow interaction, data mining and transaction history. Data mining allows you to track your prospect and customer information so you can send timely notices to them. Your programmer may also work with XML, handle database administration, and connect sites to existing databases.
The marketer sees a website as a powerful tool in the tool pouch, looking at it as one part of the overall business stategy. That strategy includes customer relations management, sales promotion and public relations. The marketer also works to bring people to the website with blogs, social networks, paid searches and a myriad of other actions that increase traffic. A marketer will watch the pageviews and tracking to validate the effectiveness of Web design work.
If we’ve convinced you that a friend’s cousin’s son is not your best bet for such an important part of your business, let’s talk about the goals VIA Marketing’s Web development team can help you with. Visit www.viamarketing.com to see a few of our client’s websites.