Is the Free Clinic Right for You?
What can you get from a free web clinic?
If all you want from your website is contacts or directions for people who know you, your current site is probably fine. But here are other things you might also want:
- To get found by people who are looking for the things you offer.
- To inform people about things you do or care about.
- To impress people with your commitment to quality.
- To convince people to take some action you want them to take.
- To enable people to do things without confusing them.
You’re not going to succeed at such things without help. A Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tool like Weebly, Wix or Squarespace can take you partway there, but it won’t show you how to think about the process, or how to make sure you get a return on your investment of time (and a little money).
If either of the two profiles below sounds like you, our “Teaching Clinic” model may be a good fit:
New Small Business
You don’t have much time to learn internet marketing, wrestle with unfamiliar software or try different ways to organize a website. So you stick with what you have, if you have something, even though you know it makes you look bad.
You need to spend as little as possible to accomplish only the things you really need done, and if the site could help make you money, you could spend that to do more. You just need someone to offer strategic guidance and technical help, a partner to work with you to get the job done and help you gauge the impact.
If a free clinic site doesn’t work out, you can walk away without losing money, and take what you’ve learned to be a savvy client when you pay for a site.
Non-Profit
One of your board members knew enough technology to make an ugly site. You’ve been using it along with other free tools. You know there are more efficient ways to work, but nobody knows them. So you stick with what you have, because it is free and you have someone who can maintain it.
You have very little time during board meetings to even talk about technology, much less do research and make decisions. You would love someone to make a new site that does more than your current one does, coming to meetings with suggestions you can accept or modify, depending on the time you have.
We offer much more than a DIY service, though less than a professional shop. On the other hand, we don’t cost money – just a few meetings where you learn how to think about websites, and emails where you answer our questions.
Read our Scope of Services to see how we stack up.