Why Build a Website

Published Mar 05, 2009

Every business, start-up or established, is looking for one thing: increased revenues. With this end in mind all businesses spend both time and money trying to get their product or service out in front of as many people as possible. The thought process here is pretty simple. If more people know about your company, more people are going to purchase your good or service. This is pretty intuitive. More people = more business.

A website is a great way to get your company’s name out there for people to see. We are going to look at some of the reasons that a web site is a worthwhile investment for your company. We will also look at some common fallacies related to getting a site up and running.

Cost Effective

In today’s tough economic climate this is what it always comes down to, the bottom line. I know from experience that many fledgling businesses believe that it takes thousands of dollars to get started with a web site. While this is true in some situations, many times a site can be designed for a fraction of that. There are some secrets though to keeping your costs down when designing a site.

  • Shop around – get multiple quotes. This doesn’t mean take the cheapest quote, but it does mean look around so you have some options.
  • Have a focused idea of what you want – if you know what you want (general layout, color-scheme, content, etc.) less time will be spent on revisions. Less time = less money.
  • Trim – this is advice usually reserved for authors, but I believe it applies to websites too. Cut everything that’s not important. Look through your ideas for the site. If any part is not contributing to the end goal of the site, cut it. Even if its cool.
  • Start small – you may have a great idea for an interactive site that offers tons of goodies to your visitors. That’s great, but the $10,000 in development can probably be better spent elsewhere. Start with something simple and if you get a large enough user base grow the site. (This obviously doesn’t apply if your business is a site that offers cool interactive stuff like facebook).

A website is also cost effective in that it is mostly a one time cost. Unlike other forms of advertising where you pay every time the add is run, once you pay for the development of your site, its upkeep is relatively inexpensive. This is especially true if you have your site developed using a CMS, or content management system. This allows you the site owner to make changes to existing pages and even create your own without having to go back to your designer and pay them to add additional pages. This of course will add to the startup cost of the site. But it will save money in the long run, especially if you have a site with constantly evolving content.

Lots of Eyes

If one of the main goals of advertising is to get your company out in front of as many people as possible, then the web is hard to beat. In North America alone it is estimated that there are almost 250 million internet users (courtesy: Internet World Stats). It’s not hard to see then that if you can get just a small fraction of those people to visit your site you will be getting your name out to a ton of people.

Professional

In today’s marketplace I believe that a website is essential. Why? A website lends legitimacy to a business. I know that when I hear about a new product or service the first thing I do is head on the net and look for their site. If I don’t find anything I am instantly annoyed, and a bit put off. If a company can’t even bother to put up a website for their services how serious are they. Especially when the internet is one of the quickest and easiest way to get in contact with a company and to make a purchase. On the flipside a well designed and useful site will impress me. If there are two companies offering the same service and one has a website where I can order and one doesn’t I will almost always go with the company with the site, even if their service is more expensive.

Remember through all this though a website is only a tool. The most powerful driver of sales is your product or service itself. All the websites, advertising and marketing in the world won’t help you if what you’re selling isn’t worthwhile. But a simple, clean, functional website can help push your sales to the next level.



If you like what you saw and can afford to please make a donation below so that I can continue to do what I am doing.



Leave a Reply