I don't want to make it sound like all web developers are hacks or scammers, but unfortunately some of them are. It happens all the time with small businesses. It doesn't take anything but a computer to start your own web development company. Make a few sample sites, maybe one for a family members business to show off and you start advertising to small businesses. It's hard to know what a good web developer looks like to a small business owner, so they tend to go with either the cheapest or the best salesman. 6-12 months later they either have nothing (all to common) or they have some disaster of a wordpress site with a bunch of plugins and no training or plan on using the content management system. Then who knows how effective their SEO is, so will it even show up in searches.
So it's really common for small businesses to get stuck with a crappy website or worse someone tries to DIY and you end up with a myspace looking abomination with text that follows the mouse and music playing in the background
Thats where facebook wins for small businesses. They provide a template that looks decent, has a super easy to use CMS, you can post updates with pics from your phone. They don't charge for it.
Also - maintaining an online shop is more of a pita than it sounds. You need software to run it (like shopify), you need someone to manage it, you typically need to run a separate inventory on it, you need people in shipping, you have to pay and manage a CC processor, you need CS folks to answer questions and take emails. It's not as easy as throwing up a page with some stuff. The easy selling is using Amazon, Ebay or Facebook that provide alot of the leg work for you.
So it's really common for small businesses to get stuck with a crappy website or worse someone tries to DIY and you end up with a myspace looking abomination with text that follows the mouse and music playing in the background
Thats where facebook wins for small businesses. They provide a template that looks decent, has a super easy to use CMS, you can post updates with pics from your phone. They don't charge for it.
Also - maintaining an online shop is more of a pita than it sounds. You need software to run it (like shopify), you need someone to manage it, you typically need to run a separate inventory on it, you need people in shipping, you have to pay and manage a CC processor, you need CS folks to answer questions and take emails. It's not as easy as throwing up a page with some stuff. The easy selling is using Amazon, Ebay or Facebook that provide alot of the leg work for you.
