A website designer introduced himself to me by posting a snarky comment on the Augusta Free Press Facebook page about the value of what I do for clients in web design.
As anyone would do in such a situation, I looked at his website to see how he goes about his job. And see, in the process, that his portfoilio page lists 15 websites, 14 of which have Google PageRanks of 0/10 or 1/10.
As anyone would do upon coming upon this kind of data, I pointed out to him something that was probably rather obvious: nobody reads your websites.
The answer that I got back was expected. Whenever a rating isn’t what you want it to be, you question the value of the rating, akin to how when your favorite football team is losing, you yell at the ref.
Reminds me of a discussion that I had with an account executive for a local radio station that according to the Arbitron rating service is the lowest-rated station in the local market. Guy called me at least once a month trying to get me to buy ads for clients on his station, and though I never had any intention of doing so, I’d let him down easy.
This led to the phone calls, and the pressure – so one day I decided to have the uncomfortable little talk.
Look, you’re a nice guy, but your station has no listeners. I’m not wasting money on advertising on it. Sorry.
The response wasn’t unexpected.
The rating service penalizes stations that don’t pay to subscribe to it. So the ratings are off. We get lots of listeners. Trust us. We do.
Arbitron, for what it’s worth, doesn’t base its ratings on which stations pay for it, and which ones don’t. And in the same vein, while Google PageRanks aren’t perfect, they do mean something.
Which brings me back to my Facebook critic, whose response to my counter-critique was also not unexpected.
My clients are happy. And happy clients are all that matters.
I don’t doubt that the guy’s clients are happy. Most small-business owners have no clue how much web traffic they’re getting, and most unforunately don’t have in place tracking measures so that they can get a handle on where their business is coming from.
So you can be happy that you paid somebody to build you a website, and that the effort resulted in an actual website that looks good, but that doesn’t mean that your happiness has anything to do with whether or not your investment leads to you making more money.
Consider this unsolicited advice the next time you look around for somebody to build a new website for your business. Make sure they can put together a nice, attractive website, and make sure that they know what to do on the back end to make it so that people actually can find you online.
A website that nobody sees is worthless.
Chris Graham is the president of Augusta Free Press LLC, a full-service website design, graphic design, audio and visual and marketing services firm based in Waynesboro, Va. Email him at [email protected]. More online at www.AFPBusiness.com.
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