By Jake Evans | High Level Marketing
There’s so much that goes into doing a website right if you’re looking to bring your entire online presence to the next level and generate more leads and new patients!
At High Level Marketing, we get it – if you are (or were) a newer medspa or aesthetics business, you simply need to have an online presence to get started. Many begin with a do-it-yourself solution or find that family friend down the street or a freelancer somewhere online, which is an approach we endorse as you need to begin somewhere.
But we often see a scenario where spa owners sometimes continue with this approach, investing smaller amounts more often as they see fewer results that hold them back from growth, instead of investing a bit more thoughtfully and strategically.
In the end, those smaller investments can add up to a larger amount being spent in total than if an owner had invested with a holistic marketing agency earlier on.
What we also see often are spa owners finally ready to up their marketing game, but with no knowledge of how to do that. They call us and say: “I don’t even know what questions to ask!”
Whether you’re interested in working with High Level Marketing or not, below are 10 questions you should be asking any agency about your new website, so that you can make a better-informed decision on who to work with when you’re ready to up your digital marketing game and grow your spa!
- Will I own my website?
10-20 years ago, paying for a marketing agency’s services to design and build a website for your business didn’t necessarily mean that you’d own it. This was one of the first business models of the website design & development industry, generally because in those early days,
anything related to building a website – including the infrastructure to support a website once built – required a huge degree of technical knowledge, and there just weren’t consumer-friendly solutions like there are today. A significant degree of technical knowledge
(including other areas of expertise, like copywriting, design skills, SEO experience, etc.), is still required today, but as the industry has matured, there just isn’t as much of a legitimate justification for the ownership of a website a client has fully paid for to not be owned by them. This is why in our opinion, if you speak to an agency that does NOT allow you to own your website once it’s fully paid for, that’s an indicator that you should get a second option from a different marketing provider.
- What platform will it be built on?
This is pretty heavily related to number one above. Again, in the early days of web development, open-source, consumer-friendly solutions like WordPress either didn’t exist, or weren’t the useful platforms that they are today. You’ll still sometimes come across agencies that speak out against industry-standard platforms like WordPress, which in our experience, is due to one of these items being true:
— The agency has a proprietary platform they prefer to guide clients towards, with the belief that it makes clients more ‘sticky’ and harder for them to leave. Proprietary platforms also have the downside of a steeper learning curve for you as the client, if you’re included to make changes and edits yourself.
— They aren’t familiar with WordPress or other typical platforms, and prefer to guide clients towards the platform they have expertise designing & developing in, which isn’t necessarily ‘nefarious’ – if an agency is efficient and specialized in one platform over another (and most are to a certain degree), then they should be able to provide you with a better product, faster turnaround times, and potentially even some cost-savings passed on to you, as opposed to needing to account for the extra time and effort they’d spend towards building on a platform that they’re just not as efficient developing with.
The takeaway from number two here is that you should ask what platform and agency would be building your website on, and if it’s a proprietary platform that isn’t readily transferable to another agency or website hosting solution that is familiar with industry-standard website solutions, you should probably get a second option from a different marketing provider.
- Will my new website easily integrate with third-party booking & scheduling services?
Any agency worth its salt, regardless of what platform they build their websites on, should be able to integrate third-party booking & scheduling solutions, but there are a couple of things to consider that can make this process smoother:
— If your needs and budget allow for it, choose a larger, reputable, more experienced booking & scheduling provider like Mangomint. Typically they’ll have ready-to-go integrations that might be as simple as providing a snippet of code to your marketing agency that they can copy-paste onto a page. They might even have a small piece of software (typically called a plugin), that your agency can install on your website. Less sophisticated booking & scheduling solutions might not have ready-to-go solutions, meaning it might require a custom integration that can take longer and potentially cost more to accomplish.— It’s likely that if an agency is building their websites on a proprietary platform, no booking and scheduling solution will have a user-friendly, ready-to-go integration for that platform. How could they – they don’t have any insight into what that proprietary platform would require. This often means that a booking solution would need a more “code-based” option for website integration, which can introduce complications.
The takeaway here is to choose a reputable booking & scheduling solution if it aligns with your needs and budget, and to make sure you’re choosing a marketing agency that does not build their websites on a proprietary platform.
- Does it look and function great on mobile devices and desktops & laptops?
At High Level Marketing, the majority of our aesthetics and medspa client websites receive more than 71% of their traffic from mobile devices, with the rest of the traffic coming from laptops, desktops, and tablets. While the majority of ALL internet traffic occurs on mobile devices, some industries – like the aesthetics and medspa industries – have higher amounts of traffic from mobile devices than others. This means that it’s more important for your website to look and function greater on mobile devices than for other industries.
The takeaway here is to make sure you ask if your new website will have the same visual and functional quality on mobile devices as it does on a laptop or desktop computer.
- Will you be writing all the content for my new website?
Content is king. It’s a cliche, but that’s because it’s been true for years, and it continues to be undeniably important moving forward. Quality written content is important for helping your website show up in search results, and for building the confidence and trust in the minds of your website visitors that you’re a legitimate choice for their needs. But it’s harder to write than you think! Time and time again, clients state that they will provide written content to HLM as we build a website, only to sit down to begin writing and realize just how long it takes to do well. Some will default to using ChatGPT, which can aid as a starting point or a sounding board, but often comes across as robotic, and can’t really account for how a certain paragraph will fit into a certain design on a certain website page, if it flows with other content on that same page, or if certain phrases or “voice” has been over-used elsewhere throughout a website, among other considerations.
The takeaway here is to ask if full, professional, written content for the entire website is included. If it is, but it comes at an extra cost, we would heavily recommend that you make that extra investment. At HLM, every website we build comes with professional copywriting services included.
- Do you source imagery for my new website?
This one is easy – if an agency is breaking out the costs of sourcing stock imagery or graphics for your site, that should be a red flag that you’ll likely be nickeled-and-dimed for other things along the way as well, and that this agency is maybe more of a lower-budget solution that might not be able to provide you with the level of marketing you need to help your business grow.
That being said, nothing beats having a client provide real-life, authentic imagery of their spa location, patients receiving treatments, and their team members providing services. We’d recommend investing in a professional on-site photo shoot or even dedicating several hours to staging different types of photos and accomplishing with a newer iPhone yourself. Once you see that imagery on your shiny new website, you’ll feel very glad that you invested the resources required that, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty minimal overall.
The takeaway here is to ask how an agency will handle imagery for your new site and to seriously consider investing in quality imagery that will serve you for at least the next few years. Oh, and a pro tip – agencies LOVE it when you give them more to work with than they may even need. It’s better to have a ton of assets and resources and not need them than it is to need them and not have them!
- What other costs are required beyond the initial investment?
Website hosting is probably the largest website-related cost that is required once your new website is built and launched unless you’re committed to a full ongoing marketing strategy with your agency. Every single website on the internet is “hosted” on a physical computer (called a “website server” in this case,) somewhere in the world – most likely in some huge, cold, endless warehouse that looks like something out of a science fiction movie. There are costs incurred to keep these website servers running and maintained, so agencies need to charge for monthly website hosting.The takeaway here is to always ask an agency how they handle Website Hosting, exactly what’s included in that, and the ongoing cost. Each agency can be a little different – for example, HLM’s website hosting includes extra layers of industry-leading security and performance solutions to keep client websites safe and as speedy as possible.
What does ongoing support and website edits look like?
The other cost you need to ask about is general support, maintenance, and website edits & updates. If you need a new team member added to your website, what does that cost? Does the agency charge hourly for that? What’s the hourly fee? Is there a minimum, or do they charge a pro-rated amount for 15 minutes of work? Is any amount of simpler website changes included every month, or with the ongoing marketing plan you’ve signed up for? Do you have the ability to log into the website yourself and make changes (if your time and technical inclination allows)?
The takeaway here is to simply ask what the process and costs look like when you need to update or change the information on your website after it’s launched.
- What do you need from me to get started, and how involved do I need to be?
Average marketing is done for you. Exceptional marketing is a partnership. This means that, when working with High Level Marketing, you can expect a partnership mindset for all client interactions. We will outline the things that we need from you and the level of involvement required on your part to make this a successful endeavor. That being said, we do everything we can to make it as easy as possible for you!
The takeaway here is to always ask an agency to outline what the onboarding process is and what they will need from you. If an agency can readily answer this question, in a step-by-step fashion, then this indicates they have refined processes and procedures in place that are designed to make projects progress smoothly.
- What do you need from me to get started, and how involved do I need to be?
Agencies that are focused on just the here-and-now for their clients often design and build websites that are difficult to expand upon in the future. This is true for the website itself (like needing to completely re-structure the website architecture when you need to add a new category of services 12 months from now), or when you expand into new or additional marketing services – both online and offline – that your website and online presence needs to reflect. The takeaway here is to ask your potential agency how they will account for your future business growth, and if there would need to be a significant amount of work that needs to be “undone” on your existing website to accommodate for that in the future. If you’re changing your business from a MedSpa to an Auto Shop, that would require building a new website, but it’s always worth asking how an agency would handle possible significant business changes 1-3 years down the road.
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