Why Do You Need A Website?
There are
plenty of reasons to have a presence on the internet, not all
are directly related to sales, but most are related to
that bottom line of your tax statement. The goal of a website
is not always to sell a product or service, sometimes it is
simply provide company information, to save you time, to save
personnel, to provide better customer service, to sell
advertising or just because you want one. The reasons can be
as vast as the possibility of the designs, so let's hit on a
few of the key purposes for a website:
-
Direct
selling on the internet.
This is the obvious one. More and more purchases are
being made online. If you have a product or service to
sell. This could be a great addition to your current
sales.
-
Online
presence.
People don't just shop online, they search for the
places they go to shop and research the companies they
want to do business with. Even for those have nothing
to sell online or do not want to sell online, a
presence (even if a small one) online is almost a
necessity in today's market.
-
Save Time.
Sometimes a lot of phone calls are good for business,
but sometimes they just take time away from more
important things. By placing some of this information
online, you could direct those callers to your
website.
-
Customer
Service.
While an online presence for current customers can
save time, it can also increase your bottom line by
increasing your customer satisfaction. We all know
that our best resource for new and repeat business is
our current client base. By making things easy for
them, giving them 24/7 access to the information they
need, we increase their satisfaction. They, in turn,
return to buy more products/services and refer others.
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Why Not
Build It Yourself?
Despite what
anyone tells you, you can build a site yourself. There are
even online resources for you to actually build and host your
site online. If any design firm tells you can't build a simple
website on your own, turn around and walk away. Sometimes all
you need is the time to do it. However, there are advantages
to hiring a design firm.
-
Knowledge
and Resources.
This would be the most important reason to hire a
design firm. They will have the knowledge, resources
and software to develop pages and graphics that are
properly optimized, avoid the problems that hurt your
site on the search engines and be able to suggest new
ideas for your site.
-
Browsers
and Screen Resolutions.
A design firm will also know what designs have
cross-browser and resolution functionality. Just
because your site looks good in your computer using
Internet Explorer 5.0 at 800x600 resolution, does not
mean it will look the same to someone using Netscape,
an older browser or a larger screen resolution. Then
you also have to consider Mac users and Web TV users.
-
Time.
Your time is valuable. Sometimes the time it would
take for you to design your own site, find adequate
hosting and do your own submissions is just not worth
it.
-
Programming.
When a site requires functionality, databases or
custom scripting it is always smart to hire a
designer. Even if you want to do the design of the
site yourself, there is a lot of server knowledge,
thought and research that must go into scripting and
database work. At least hire a consultant to advise
you on the best languages to use for what you are
trying to do.
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Why Not
Promote It Yourself?
You can promote
it yourself! All the information you need is online. Any
individual can submit their own site and even pay the fees
required by various engines to get preferred listing or
expedited indexing. The reason you hire a firm for this is
TIME! The search engines and directories must be
researched to know EXACTLY how to submit, where and
when and how often to submit to make your site found within
the first few pages of a search. The "SUBMIT TO 1000 SEARCH
ENGINES" programs DO NOT WORK! Do not fall into
that trap. The major engines and directories will ignore what
they call "spamming the search engines". Some will even ban
your site for it. Take the time to KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
This is vital! If you do this yourself, make sure you are
submitting correctly. Meta Tags and spamming search words are
not a solution and will often do you more harm than good.
Doing it wrong can penalize you severely an cripple your
potential for some time.
Do I Need A
Fancy, Flashy Site?
No! Sometimes a
fancy, high dollar site is not what you need. Fancy graphics
and flash are nice, but you have to consider who your target
audience is. If your target market is the average individual
with a dial up connection and an average graphics card, then
flash would not be the way to go. Visitors have a tendency to
leave sites quickly if they have to wait. You don't have to
get flash and graphics that take forever to load to have a
beautiful, functional site.
On the other
hand, if your target is businesses with high speed connections
and fancy computers and you offer a high dollar product or
service that needs to spill out confidence and the "Wow"
effect, then go all out. Get the fancy flash, the high quality
graphics and make 'em go "WOW!" when they enter your site, but
don't make it hard to navigate.
Sites should
all be easy to navigate and understand. Your user should be
able to tell instantly what it is you do and how they could
benefit from being there. You need to grab their attention,
but you also need to hold on to it!
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