When you hire a website design firm to build your site you are committing to partner with them for a long time. It’s your job to do your homework. One way to get a feel for a design company is to think how you would feel if there was a website emergency. Would you think, “UGH I have to call that website guy.” or would you think, “Oh I’ll call Sue, she’ll take care of this and I can get back to work?” I had a situation in February with one of my higher end restaurants. They are in downtown Wilmington, NC. The week of Valentines Day the cable system was down due to a storm. The restaurant was unable to receive phone calls or online reservations. The owner gave me a call to see what I suggested. We came up with the idea to save the day. We used the manager’s cell phone number as the ‘press to call’ number on the mobile site and I changed the phone number on the website to her cell number as well. 10 minutes late I got a text from the owner telling me calls were pouring in. They ended up having a bigger night than they anticipated but most importantly their customers weren’t inconvenienced. The point here isn’t that I saved Valentines day at a Wilmington restaurant, although that is cool, it’s that they were comfortable enough to trust me to work with them to solve a problem. They made a phone call and checked it off their list. Make sure you too partner with your website designer. If you don’t, find a new one.
Sue Rachunok owns Design Interventions,
A full service website design firm that prides itself in keeping it’s customers’ customers happy online.
