What You Need To Know Before You Redo Your Pet Sitting Website

Have you ever had a really horrible experience with trying to build a website?

I have.

For example: You sort of know what you want but are trusting the person you hired to help you create this vision of miracles?  You expect it to sing your businesses brand and makes people fall over themselves with an incredible impression of who your business is resulting in lots of sales?

This fairy tail doesn’t exist. That isn’t the way it works. It isn’t reality.

So How Do You Get A New Pet Sitting Website?

Most of the time it isn’t as simple as just plugging in some colors and words to a template either. I mean, your business is different and unique, right? So why have a template that isn’t responsive and looks like so many others out there? You need someone to customize a template to make it your own. Not to mention, so many websites are lead with graphics now so having a designer on your team is essential!

It used to be (even just two years ago) you could hire someone to slap up a template and then be finished. There was minimal graphics with a few pictures, maybe a slider at the most. You would write in what you wanted to say and BOOM! You are done.

Somewhere between then and now it has evolved into needing a developer, designer, and graphic artist.

Throughout this evolution, I feel like we (as business owners who want a new website) have forgotten two things:

1. We need to know what we don’t want.

2. A designer isn’t a developer.

Here Is What I Mean:

Let’s take a look at #1 first. Knowing what you don’t want is as important as knowing what you want. Why? So that you steer clear of those things. For those of us who “don’t know what we want” knowing what we don’t want does help to narrow the field down.

But it is overwhelming, right? You want someone to just hold your hand and walk you through the entire process. Telling you what looks good, taking care of the technical side of things, etc. But that is like finding Price Charming. There aren’t many of them out there and you have to kiss a lot of toads first.

So what is a pet sitting business owner to do? 

Often times, myself included, we just throw our hands up in the air and say “The heck with it” and stop the project in its tracks.

Well that does us no good in getting us to our goal.

A Designer Isn’t A Developer

There is a major difference between someone who can throw up a template and insert things into it and then someone that can customize that template, make it your own. Understand that you have certain colors in your logo and use them throughout the website theme, as well as the font. Things need to be uniformed don’t forget!

There is one type of person who can write the code and there is another person that can design the site. Rarely is it the same person that can successfully do both. They can try but….. ?

 It is like asking your home builder to tell you how to feng shui your home.

That rarely works out. 

Getting Personal

It took me forever and a day to try and find someone to give my Bella’s website a facelift. Finally one day I just “went for it”  But there was a lot of work on my end required. I needed to figure out what template I wanted. I needed to figure out what pages I wanted to keep and add. I had to find the plug ins and have the creative idea in my head. I needed to remind the person that my colors all needed to reflect my brand as well as the font type and more. It was wonderful working with her. She took direction incredibly well, but I was clearly in control. It still isn’t exactly where I want it to be. A huge overhaul is still in the making. But for now, there is a facelift. Truth be told, I am about to embark on that same journey with the Jump Consulting page.

The only real time in my life I have experienced someone who is great at both the technical and design aspect of websites has been Jake from Precision Graphics. While you may have to get on a wait list to start working with him and he won’t be the least expensive person… you will get both the design and technical mind when you work with him. I have always been a fan of him but finding people like him is like finding a Prince Charming. Jake and I actually met on odesk years ago.

Turning It Onto You

Who do you use for your website? Would you recommend them? Give them a shout out below. Or perhaps you have a horror story that you can share the lesson below? What did you learn from it?

In any case – it is important to know that not all web designers are created equal.