Before you ask your kid to throw together a few pages for your business, ask yourself if you’d let him or her produce your next commercial, design your office, or cut your hair. A copy of FrontPage does not a web designer make. To create a site that generates income, you need someone who understands the latest technology and knows which features are appropriate for your business and why.

Find a professional who can align with the vision you have for your business. Your web developer should be as passionate about your success as you are.

You can build the most beautiful, technologically advanced website, but if you walk away from it, you have just wasted thousands of dollars. Successful websites take work. You must become involved in the day-to-day administration of your site, including search engine placement, updating content and communicating with potential customers.

If you work at it, your site will become successful…eventually. Most true income generating sites take a year or two of good old-fashioned hard work before they begin turning a profit. But once the ball gets rolling, watch out! We have several clients whose sites now generate 2 to 10 times what their brick-and-mortar locations bring in.

Choosing a web designer to interview should be easy. Skip the Yellow Pages and go right to the company web site. A good web development company will include a portfolio of their work on their site. Much like hiring a professional photographer, you want to look at their work and make sure they have the talent necessary to create a site that will properly represent your company to the world.

Once you’ve found a few designers whose work you like, start calling their clients. That’s right. Call their clients. That’s likely to narrow your list of possible designers pretty quickly. More than 50% of companies with web sites are dissatisfied with their web designer. Sometimes it is a personality conflict, or a customer who is never satisfied with anything. But if you call five or six companies and they are all dissatisfied, it’s time to cross that designer’s name off the list.

Finally, arrange a meeting, preferably in their office. Have them show you examples of sites with features similar to the ones you need. Listen to their suggestions and notice how well they listen to you. And hire the designer you click with. You’ll know it when it happens. You’ll walk out of their office more excited about the future than you were when you walked in.

I hear it all the time. “We don’t want to sell our products on the web because then our competitors will see our pricing.” Having worked as a secret shopper for my parents’ business, I can assure you that if your competitors are any good, they already know your pricing. Don’t let that fear stop you from gaining potentially thousands of new customers.

Our three most successful clients sell nametags, trailer hitches and artificial food. People are already on the web buying what you have to sell, no matter how obscure or customized your product may be. All you have to do is make it easy for them to find you, and easy for them to make a purchase.