A lot of great businesses have completely mediocre websites.  It’s easy for a brick-and-mortar establishment with no history of web leads and sales to overlook this point of contact for their business front end.

Some such businesses take the step to create a website, but only perfunctory in nature with little attention paid to goals and design.  Depending upon your market position, this may or may not be risky.  For successful mid-sized enterprise looking to grow and raise capital with a public stock offering, this is a terrible mistake to make.  First impressions are everything and a cheap-looking “afterthought” website says that either (A.) no one within the company is keeping close tabs on the company’s image or the manner in which company information is disseminated, or worse yet (B.) they don’t have the budget available to put together even a minimally presentable web front end.

Just use common sense, there’s no need for a long-winded explanation of how web design can affect first impressions of your business.  As has been mentioned before on this website, spending a lot guarantees no measure of success, as there are no silver bullets.  However – the flipside – spending nothing (in time, energy or currency) guarantees that your priorities will be made known to your sales prospects.

Chances are you’ll make a much better impression on sales prospects if your site has received some professional attention on both a content level and aesthetic level.