Amateurs can damage business & cost you money

Many of you may remember this story a few years back.  In a church in Spain, there’s a 19th century painting of Jesus that needed restoration and a local woman, who calls herself an amateur painter, took it upon herself to restore the painting (free of charge) and the result was a disaster.

There’s no doubt this woman had good intentions and thought she was doing the church a favor by restoring the painting.  Even if you don’t know anything about art, you can see by the end product that she clearly caused more damage and now, it may not even be able to be restored by an expert. By the end of this post, you’ll see how amateurs can damage business and the result COULD be a lot of lost sales.

Saving money now can cost you later

In an attempt to save money, many people turn to amateurs to do a job better left to a professional.  For example:  a homeowner needs a light fixture installed and to save money, she gets her brother to come over and install it.  He’s not an electrician but says he can do the job and everyone’s happy until the wiring causes a fire.

Here’s one we deal with a lot (or rather, we  come in and pick up the pieces afterwards):  a business owner needs a new website but doesn’t want to spend money so he/she gets a friend to do it. The friend builds the site and although it’s small, doesn’t look that great and doesn’t have much information, the owner is satisfied because he didn’t pay much for it.

Fast forward a couple of months and he’s wondering why he’s not getting any phone calls.   It’s probably because no one is finding his bargain website and as a result, he’s not getting business from it.

How much are customers worth?

Again, these 2 people had good intentions and thought they had done ‘ok’ work though clearly they had not.  You may think the ‘bad’ website wasn’t causing a problem as it’s not the same thing as a ruined painting or a house fire, but it IS causing a problem.  While not physically damaging as a fire, the ‘not getting found’  website is costing that business owner money.

Every day people are looking online and NOT finding his website, which results in potential customers going elsewhere.  If people do find his website, they probably leave without calling because there’s hardly any information on it and it just doesn’t look very good.  All of those people are potential sales that should and could be his.

There’s a reason why you hire a professional

The amateur who offered to build the website meant well though he or she did not have a good understanding of web design, search engine optimization or the many other elements in web development.  When you don’t know enough about any subject, you simply ‘don’t know what you don’t know.’

Many of our clients have tried the inexpensive way for getting a website only to figure out the hard way that it had cost them so much more in the end.  While it may seem like a bargain, amateurs can damage a business and that’s certainly no bargain.  Sadly, there’s no magic wand you can wave to turn back time and do it over the right way.