Some staggering results of research carried out recently and published on Raintoday.com shows that an amazing 97% of service buyers base their decisions on the service provider’s website, further confirming just how important a website or blog is for any freelancer’s business (source: Raintoday, How Clients Buy 2009 Benchmark Report).
The study analysed the responses of 200 buyers from companies of all sizes of professional services such as accounting, financial consulting, engineering, IT consulting and services, legal services, management consulting, marketing, public relations, advertising and training, for a total of over $1.7 billion in professional services purchased. Only 3% said the service provider’s website had no bearing on their decision, and the majority (54%) said it had a great deal of influence on their decision. The rest said the website had little or some influence (23% and 20% respectively).
This is a huge increase since the same research was carried out in 2005, with a 23% increase in the percentage saying the service provider’s website has at least “some influence” over their ultimate decision to buy services from the provider, showing that an effective website is more important than ever for professional translators, an importance likely to continue to increase in coming years.
With a well-designed, well-written and well-optimised website, translators can:
- establish they are professional, with design, writing and content that adequately reflects the translator’s expertise
- establish they are worthy of consideration, with client lists, testimonials, case studies
- establish themselves as an authority and expert in their field, with well-written content, white papers, publications, videos and other tools to build credibility, reliability and trust.