3 Tips To Choosing The Best Website Design Company For Your Dentist Office

On this episode, we talk about 3 Tips To Choosing The Best Website Design Company For Your Dentist Office:

1. Research - This is the most important step of choosing the best website design company. First, you’ll want to check out their website along with any social media presence they have. This will give you an idea of their capabilities as well as their company culture. Next up, make sure to visit the portfolio page and actually visit the websites in the portfolio. You’ll want to look at the features they use on the websites and overall performance.
   
   
2. Set Up A Meeting - After you’ve done your research it’s important to set up some sort of meeting, either phone call or in person. During this meeting you’ll want to ask as many questions as you can. Starting with ‘have you built a dentist website before?’. Other important questions:

           a. How does your process work?

           b. Can we make changes after the website is complete?

           c. Can I meet your team?

3. What Happens After? - We’ve heard horror stories involving businesses that can’t even access their websites because their website design company has full control over it. It is very important that you as business owner has the admin control over your website and that the web design company just has ‘access’. It’s also important to pay a retainer for that company at least for the next 6 months to make any updates.
   

Chrsitian: [00:00:14] Hello and welcome to another episode.

[00:00:17] Today, we're going to talk about three tips to choosing the best website design company for your dentist office or really anyone who's looking for a new website design. If your website's outdated, you definitely want to listen to this episode because we're going to be talking about those three things that you want to do before you hire that company.

Aaron: [00:00:39] Yeah and I think what's cool is that...this, you know, I think of dentists and I think that they're pretty busy. So what's cool about the podcast is just listening to this 15 minute episode. You have everything that you need to go out and find that person. So pretty cool.

Chrsitian: [00:00:55] So you might have an assistant. you know. kind of doing all this work for you. You might be able to listen to this episode and then have your assistant go through this process. What's the number one thing that you do is a little bit of research. And this is probably the most important thing that you do for yourself. And the first thing that you want to do is: number one, once you do your research and narrow down a list of companies is to one, go to their website and also go to any other social media platforms. So Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, anything you can find on them. You know, you want to see they're active, you want to see, you know, the type of website they have. You want to kind of get a feel for, you know, how they work and their approach to creating websites. And also look at the portfolio, obviously the profile is going to be, you know, one of the bigger things you want to spend your time on. But all of these things combined is going to tell you, you know, how they work and the process of creating websites and the type of work that they can that they can do. I think one of the main things that I would look out for is if they do their websites template based meaning that if there's 10 other dentists that are contacting that particular company, are all those 10 websites going to look exactly the same? Are they all going to have the same verbiage? Because you don't want to look exactly like your competition. So you want to make sure that you find someone who is going to make you a truly custom website. It's something that you can customize on your end as well.

Aaron: [00:02:28] Yeah. And I think sometimes don't get caught up in their website as much as their portfolio and really if you can just see how recent they've built websites because, you know, their portfolio may have some older items or some older websites. So I would just go and check those out see what's been shown there and if it's I think good portfolios have what they designed. And you know because if it's a website somebody built it a year ago and then the company has the ability to change it - it looks completely different. So it's not a true representation. So hopefully they just have some cool pictures of it and it really fits what you think is going to do well.

[00:03:09] And then after you have the conversation about those projects I would ask them, you know, which kind of leads us into the second piece which is setting up a meeting. So like after you've done your research and asking like we have a couple pieces here. But like asking them about their process is important. I think even with that, it's also like the websites you have currently. What was your process for those? Like why did you do what you did? And like, you know, how's the website doing now? Do you have any conversations or have you talked to those businesses? Afterwards, because that may be a good indication for you that they're telling you everything that you want to hear but it may not be the most truthful thing or they're kind of leaning more towards something that sounds better for them but if the website's performing well afterwards which we've had some clients who've told us like "Hey, you know, this was the best investment we've ever had. This is helping bring in so much business for us." And I think that really just speaks volumes as not just a site that was built but it's actually helping them and understanding that will help the process as well.

Chrsitian: [00:04:14] So was that number two or that was -?

[00:04:16] I kind of segued to number two where'd you like in that meeting, setting up the meeting, you would to ask about the process but I think one something that we didn't put out here was to ask, you know, why did you do this with this website? Like a project or a portfolio item that you did like. Why did you do that? And what was, you know, what's the relationship with that person now?

Chrsitian: [00:04:37] Right. Okay, Yeah, so just to be clear number one was the research. Number two, is setting up that meeting for you to be able to ask all of those questions and just get a clear indication on how they work and all other things that Aaron just mentioned. I was going to see something and forgot...

Aaron: [00:04:55] Okay. Well I said this one part right here. A lot of people ask us: "Can you make changes to the website?" Okay?

Chrsitian: [00:05:04] I remember, that sparked something. So if...try to stay away from companies that have a monthly charge to have your website, basically. Just to be clear, there are monthly charges to you know have a website up online which is two parts which is hosting and the domain. Those two things are always going to end up paying for no matter what. You know hosting and domain. But then there's other companies that just charge you I don't know...Five hundred, a thousand dollars, every month to have your website. Like that's just ridiculous. You should have, you know, a set fee that you pay for your website and once that payment is done then that website is yours and all you have to pay as a client is the hosting and the domain name. Usually, it's even done yearly. So you have to worry about that on a monthly basis. And the hosting can be done yearly as well. Any other company that's trying to charge you, you know, ridiculous crazy amount fee every month just to be "running your website or maintaining it" like that's just bullcrap unless you're having like 10,000 - 20,000 visitors to your website which is likely, not unlikely, but it's pretty hard to do. Then your monthly charges shouldn't be you know, super high and they shouldn't, you know...

Aaron: [00:06:26] I think one thing with that is that they never own their website either. So it's like if you stopped paying them then you don't have that website.

Chrsitian: [00:06:32] Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Aaron: [00:06:33] So it's kind of like you leasing a car and you just never own that car.

Chrsitian: [00:06:37] Exactly.

Aaron: [00:06:37] And I think to clarify on that one piece is that we do have clients that are on a monthly retainer for websites but we're doing certain things but we build the site so that you know if it's a business owner and they want to able to handle it and save a little bit of money each month they can do that. But we do have some people who say "Hey, I don't want to have my blogs, I don't want to do any changes to the website. I don't want any of this, so I'm just going to pay you and I want you to take care of my website and I'll grow my business otherwise." Completely different than when we're talking about where people would just like lease a website.

Chrsitian: [00:07:08] Right. Exactly.

Aaron: [00:07:10] And the last piece and number two is: "Can I meet your team?" So what we've been doing lately, we've really only had people meet the team. If it was like referencing a piece where they were going to interact with each other, like say for example, Christian he's obviously part of the design team but he may not be working with a client on an ad campaign. I know we're talking about a website, but we still want to introduce him to somebody run an ad campaign.

[00:07:38] And I may not ever touch any the process of the website but just introducing me that "Hey, this is who we are. And you know you, you get this whole team and if you have questions or anything like that then, us as an agency, are here to help you not just, you know, there's one or two people who are going to be handling your website" and it's not like...a million e-mails to go to each person but it's just more of like "Hey, we're more of like a - this is a partnership deal."

Chrsitian: [00:08:02] Exactly. Whaaaaat!

Aaron: [00:08:08] All right. So I haven't been able to push that - the airhorn in a while because we've been batch recording these a little bit in advance, so it was fun to push that.

[00:08:18] This is our favorite part of the episode and we hope it is yours is, yours is...your's too. Because this is where we tell you a little bit about us and potentially a promotion or offer or something cool going on with us. One thing that somebody did reach out to us about and we've offered in the past is a free SEO audit. So not only an SEO but a website audit. Like "How is your website doing online" "So are you getting traffic or are there some changes that you should be making that could help you get more traffic" "Why is your website not converting people." You may be putting things in the wrong place, there may not have a call to action button, you may have scrolling slideshow that a lot of people have. But we offer that for free. So if you are a business owner or looking to start a business...or a business owner who has a website and would like a free audit. Just send us a DM on Instagram. Everything we are we can be contacted at is @bitbranding. So whenever you reach out to us, just say you want to do a website audit or an SEO audit and we'll do that and then send it over to you.

[00:09:31] Yeah. So we're just going back in the game, don't judge me. Don't judge us if this is your first episode.

[00:09:39] Seems louder.

Chrsitian: [00:09:40] Yeah. That I was like a more robust horn.

Aaron: [00:09:42] Oh, I think I've got a new phone since the last time we recorded.

Chrsitian: [00:09:47] Hmm? Hmm?

Aaron: [00:09:47] Yeah?

Chrsitian: [00:09:47] I don't know.

Aaron: [00:09:48] Well we recorded - our last one was in September. There I got to have phone in the beginning of September and we're in November now. So yeah. Could have been, could have been. All right, number three.

Chrsitian: [00:10:00] What happens after? So what happens after you're websites done?

Aaron: [00:10:03] You just walk away, right?

Chrsitian: [00:10:04] Yeah, just walk away. We actually talked a little bit about this before the air horn ad but basically, we - I mean we talked to clients that they don't even have access to their website. They have no idea how to get to the back end of the website. They are basically, you know being, you know, the whole website it's on someone else's account. They have absolutely no idea how to access it. They had to rely on Joe Schmoe... and...

Aaron: [00:10:39] You know, Joe Schmoe to fix something...

Chrsitian: [00:10:40] And then Joe Schmoe quit the company. So now it's kind of like the limbo. So it's kind of scary. So you need to make sure that you have admin control of your website and you know to make sure that...that's the thing if like an agency or a company creates this website and it's under their control and you don't talk to them for like a whole year. And now you're like "Oh crap, I want to update this." and then you go back to them because, you know, they're the ones running your website or they have the website, they have all the admin and the passwords and all that stuff and they're not in business anymore, then you're in trouble. It's almost impossible to you know, get in the back end of a website that you don't know the username and password for. So it's very important to have some kind of admin control over your website so that, you know, you can do whatever you want with your website - whenever you want.

Aaron: [00:11:37] Yeah, and I think it also is like for us we stick around a little bit afterwards too like whether you keep us on retainer and say like "Hey, make sure you check everything because we're going to check it, we're going to check in on all devices." But we're human. So you know there may be a button that takes people to the second page instead of the third page and you find out about it a couple of days later - well, we're going to make that fix. But if you just pay somebody and they'rea fly by night company, give them the money. They're like "Sweet, we got paid" and then you just can't fix that one button and maybe that's like a huge deal breaker for you. So huge.

Chrsitian: [00:12:13] Yeah. Yeah. I mean we do recommend, you know, to keep that company maybe on retainer for a few months after, you know, your website is done just so that if anything like this pops up they can easily and quickly get it fixed for you. But yeah, that's basically what happens after, you want to make sure they have access and you want to make sure that you are keep in contact or have some sort of retainer with the company so that you can make changes pretty easily.

Aaron: [00:12:41] Alright, that's all we have for you guys today. And if this is your first time listening, we would love for you to go over to Instagram and shoot us a DM and let us know what you thought of the episode. And in the next episodes, like in 2019, what we're really going to focus on or at least once a month - we've talked about bringing on local business owners and that doesn't mean that you're local in the Dallas,Allen area. If you are, definitely hit us up, but we can do this remotely as well. So if you're somewhere else and you would like to come on here and you're local business, we'd love to talk to you and chat with you about getting on here.

[00:13:17] And if I did not mention earlier, please make sure you subscribe. All right. That's all we got for you guys this week. Talk to you next week.

Chrsitian: [00:13:25] Bye.