Why you should use a local web company for your website
If you need a brand new website or an update to an old one, do you look for a design company in London or Manchester? Do you search for a national company with a good reputation? Or the cheapest web company you can find? While any of these options may work out for you, it makes a lot of sense to go with a local web company instead.
There are many reasons why you should use a local web company for your website…
Face-to-face meetings
While a lot of business has moved online, via Teams or Zoom, over the past couple of years, there is no better way to share ideas than through a face-to-face meeting.
When you hire someone to design and build your website, you want to make sure that you're on the same page and can work well together.
With a face-to-face meeting, you can take along ideas and documents and really discuss everything you want, while getting a good feel for your local website developer.
When you're dealing with a company in a completely different area, or even a different country, you will never have the chance to sit down and discuss your plans in person.
They're not going to vanish
When you hire a company that you only connect with digitally, you can never really be sure that they aren’t going to just disappear one day.
If they suddenly stop returning your calls or responding to your emails, you can’t just drop into the office to find out what’s going on. In the meantime, you’ve got no website and you’ve lost the money and time you’ve already invested.
When you hire a local web design company like Cotswold Web, they will always be accountable to you. We are in the same community as you and a small business just like yours.
They know how to generate local traffic
When you hire a local agency, your customers are a part of the same community as the people who work at the agency. When running a business where you want to reach customers and clients in your local area, a local web designer is the obvious choice for helping you generate local traffic – and local footfall, if you have a bricks and mortar store.
Local web companies already have a good knowledge of your area and have undoubtedly promoted other services and products in the area already.
More often than not, the staff of a local web design company will also live in the area you are trying to target. This means that they are also part of your target audience. So they will know who you’re trying to reach, and what kinds of things your website should do in order to achieve this.
Compare this with a company in a completely different area, where the staff may never even have set foot in your local area before, and the decision really is a no-brainer. Larger web design companies based in other areas won’t know what will specifically work in your local area and for the demographic you are trying to target.
They could help you link up with potential customers
A local web design company already has lots of other local connections, as they will work with a range of companies in your area in different industries. This means that they are in touch with a lot of people and organisations who could potentially benefit you in some way. Their network is your network, and they can help to link you up with potential customers or suppliers.
As local web companies usually form a personal relationship with their clients, they will feel comfortable passing their details to you - or your details to them - if they feel that the two companies could work well together.
They know your competitors
A local web company won’t just know your target audience, they will undoubtedly know some of your competitors too! As long as there is no conflict of interest, they can use the knowledge of how your competitors are attracting customers to help your business do the same.
While larger web designers will have a general understanding of the competition, they won’t have this sort of essential insider knowledge which can really help give your website the edge.
Better accountability
A local business is going to be much more accountable than one in another part of the country. This is because their reputation locally is at stake, which means they will provide you with the best possible service in order to keep their good reputation.
Local web design companies generally work for a variety of small and medium sized businesses in the area, and every client they have has the potential to help them get new clients – as long as they provide an excellent service.
Local testimonials
Local testimonials are very closely linked to local accountability. A local web designer will almost certainly have already designed websites for lots of other local companies. It’s likely that this will include businesses you already know. This means you can get some real-world reviews by contacting your web designer’s clients directly to get honest, unbiased feedback of their work.
You will also be able to ask other local people and businesses for any recommendations of local web design companies that are great to work with.
Ongoing support
Web design isn’t something that just happens once. The internet is constantly evolving. Staying on top of current trends and updates with knowledgeable web support from a local business will help ensure the ongoing success of your own business.
And if something goes wrong, or you need a minor update, it is far easier to get this from a local agency than from one hundreds of miles away, especially if you have already built a good relationship with them.
Investing in your local economy
Over the last couple of years, we have all become very aware of supporting our local economies. If you spend your money with a local web design company, much of that money will be kept in your local community and be spent with other local businesses, employing local people.
If you spend your money with a company in London or Manchester, nobody in your area will benefit from that money in any way.
By working with a local web designer, as a local business owner, you will become part of a community of local businesses which supports each other.
If your business is based in Gloucestershire, the Cotswolds or the surrounding areas, Cotswold Web can give you all of these advantages and more. We know the area, the people and the diverse businesses operating here.
Cotswold Web has designed, developed, supported and marketed hundreds of websites. Whenever we produce a website, we focus on how it will generate you more business and not just on how it looks.
We bring countless hours of design experience to every website we build and will create beautiful layouts to drive the type of customer actions you value most — whether that is sales, footfall or something else.
If you are in the Gloucestershire or Cotswold area and are looking for a reputable local web company, which will help you build a professional and high performing website, get in touch! We’d love to help you get your new project up and running.
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