A common question I hear while out on the street handing out company flyers and business cards is “Are you local?” The interesting thing about website design is that we really don’t need to be local to the customer’s area. They like the thought of a local company so that they can contact them if they need to, but this can be accomplished anyway with all of our methods of communication in existence today.
We have already proved it. We are located in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario and we have built a site for a client in Thunder Bay, Ontario. They are 1,500 kilometers away, yet we never have any problems keeping in touch. With our technology, like the BlackBerry that I use, I have all my emails sent through to it. I can get texts and obviously phone calls, plus there is unlimited calling and long distance in Canada, so it doesn’t matter where our clients are, we can always keep in touch. Even more convenient is Skype or any video chat program where you can speak face-to-face on a virtual level.
With this business, it is not really necessary to be local, even though it still provides a feeling of helping your community by keeping jobs there. In the end, price does matter for small businesses, and even if your website designer is local, you are still going through large corporations for web hosting that are not local. Sometimes, saving some cash is worth the phone calls and emails to get what you need to keep your business alive. Especially if you are in a small area where there is only one company and they are charging outrageous amounts of money for their services.
