We love working on plastic surgeon websites...

...because the images we get to use are awesome, and they want high end design with large format photos.

Many folks ask us if the images on the surgeon websites are of the surgeons' patients, and we tell them, they're not: for a few reasons:

• the before and after images of the patients are snapshots taken by the doctor's office, not professionally-taken beauty shots,
• many patients don't want their friends and families to know they had plastic surgery, so don't want to be featured on the website, and
• believe us, most of the patients are definitely not model material...

...so we research the best images to use for these sites and buy them.

To see what Dr. Sean Kelishadi (the site we're showing off here, which you can see at SSK Plastic Surgery), had to say about working with us, check out his testimonial here.

How to pick a good web design firm

We believe what we bring to the table for plastic surgeons, isn't what other web design firms bring to the table. And it's definitely not anything that IT companies bring to the table.

We think if you're comparing IT firms to web designers, you're actually looking at two different tables! There's a huge difference between web design firms and IT firms doing your website.

IT firms vs web design firms

Of course, any IT firm can design a website, but the question you should be asking is: should they? Just because an IT firm can, technically, build your website, it's not a good idea because IT companies are definitely not marketers. Of course, many web designer companies aren't true marketers either, and here's how you can tell: just take a look at their website.

If their site talks about how great they are, opposed to what they can do to help your business, they're not marketing-focused. Because  it's all about them, and not about you. And that's the big difference that makes marketing, marketing.

IT firms are focused on technology, not marketing.

How to compare web design firms

Every good web design firm builds responsive websites, however, not every web designer can do SEO well.

And most use templates to design and build their websites, not do custom design like we do.

Since there are options to who can design your company's website, the questions becomes: which is the better choice to design your website?

To see if the web design firm you're considering is any good at SEO, ask them what phrase(s) they want to be found on in a Google search, and Google it. And see where they turn up. If they don't show up on page one or two, they're probably not as good as they say.

(Note: you can find what keywords any company wants to be found for on the Page Title of their site.)

Don't blame the medium

If you've tried something, say, email, social media or newsletters, and it didn't work, the reason could be the way it was done, not the medium, but more likely because the message, visual, or execution wasn't very good.

Occasionally, we hear someone say they tried social media and it didn't work for them. Then, when we ask t hem about it in a bit more more detail, we find out they've done it randomly, and the topics they post about aren't of interest to their audience. For the clients we do social media for, we have documented success that we like to share that shows it really does work.

If you're a business-to-business company, maybe Facebook wouldn't work for you. But if you join a LinkedIn group that your audience follows, and post articles that are educational to that audience, then that's a way for social media to work for you. We've seen this type of misunderstanding the best way to use outreach for email, direct marketing and, of course, advertising.

If your website isn't how you get business....

...which is something we hear as well, then it's most likely because you have a bad website that doesn't engage, or educate your visitors. Because from personal experience, we know a good website can get you new business.

We are occassionally contacted by people we didn't know, who didn't know who we either, were until they found us on Google search.

In closing...

There's a lot to think about when it comes to selecting what web design company to do your website. We've just found most folks just don't know the right questions to ask web designers because they don't look for web design companies that often. And without asking the right questions, they may end up with a web design firm that won't do the best job for them.

Download this .pdf which has a list of the right questions to ask any web design firm.

If you do your research, we're sure you'll find the right Columbus Ohio web design company to help you with your company's website.