There are without doubt, many web designers around who can produce absolutely stunning web sites that are technically advanced with beautiful graphics and logos.
But will these kind of features help a small business to make more online sales? The reality is that in the small business world, they won't! When people are searching locally for services they are not interested in fancy graphics and company branding.
What they want is someone who can provide the service they need in the timescale then need to the standards they require at a price they can afford to pay.
So these are the details they want to find on your site.
As long as your site looks reasonably professional and trustworthy, the words on it become more important than its appearance.
But the words you use are also important for another reason other than making sales.
The words that appear on your web site will determine who and how many people actually find your site.
This is because the main search engines categorise sites by the words that are used on them, and then use these categories to serve up the results to searches that are made.
It is therefore incredibly important that your site is optimized for the search engines to give it the best possible chance of appearing at the top of the search engine results.
After all if you have invested your hard earned cash in having a site designed, you want to make sure it is found by people who are looking for the products and services you provide.
Another factor in where your site ranks in the search engines is the number of other sites that link to your site.
The more inbound links you can get pointing to your web pages the better they will rank.
Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists have tools and methods for getting links to web sites, and as such you should really consider hiring an SEO expert to get visitors to your site.
In most locations these days, there are many local SEO services to choose from.
When selecting a service though, be sure to check on the results they have achieved for other businesses to be sure you are getting someone who knows what they are doing.
Ask them to review your site before you agree to use them and only pay them based on results.
A good SEO expert will be prepared to work on a results based basis if they are confident in their ability to improve your web page rankings.