What Does Your Internet Presence Say About You?

A local website design firm noticed that their area chamber of commerce website hadn’t been updated in awhile and contact them to offer their assistance. The chamber’s decision makers were pleased to take them up on their offer and scheduled a meeting to discuss their needs.

The design firm came to the meeting with a proposed new design with an updated look with a blog component.

They discovered at that the person in charge of the website at the chamber was ‘very happy’ with the current design and only wanted to hear what they would charge to ‘keep it up’. With a few carefully chosen questions they learned that the existing website design has been created by her college aged son nearly five years ago.

Taking a deep breath, the head designer decided to give it to her straight.

“Your existing design was perfectly appropriate when it was developed, but it has a dated look that isn’t serving you well in 2008. As an organization that services and promotes businesses for an entire community, don’t you want your internet presence to represent that you are up to date and on the ball?”

As a mom, I can imagine that being asked to consider that the proud handiwork of my child is outdated would have been hard to swallow. Chances are it was a source of pride to be able to say that the website was created by her son. Fortunately though, she was a savvy business woman first and saw the validity of their argument.

She was willing at that point to take a look at their proposal and ended up hiring them to give the chamber website a complete update.

What about your online presence? What does it say about your business? Should you consider updating the look of your website?