Does,Your,Small,Business,Need, business, insurance Does Your Small Business Need a Website?

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If you want to maximize the growth of yourcompany, the answer to this question is YES!   We are now living in a new age and large numbers of consumers gravitateto the Internet for information about everything from building a log cabin orfinding the best local salon to get their hair colored at, to looking up themenu of the restaurant down the street.  For years, consumers relied on the yellow pages to find localbusinesses.  Today’s consumer goes to anInternet search engine, types in what they are looking for, and receives back alist of companies vying for their business. In today’s world, not having a website is like not being listed in thetelephone book.   A website providesadded visibility and credibility among consumers.Many business owners use the excuse that their business is“word-of-mouth” and they they do not need a website.  Do not be fooled by this myth!  Sure, you may be able to get by with thecustomers that call from your “word-of-mouth” campaign, but without a websiteyou are not maximizing the efforts of the people out on the street trumpetingyour name.    A great way to reinforcethe personal recommendations of other clients is through a professional lookingwebsite.  Even word-of-mouth customerswant to check you out before committing their money to your firm.  Another common excuse that business owners use is that the cost isprohibitive.  If done properly, even abasic one page ‘business card” website may be the most cost effective advertisingyou will ever do.   If you are ambitiousand your business model lends itself to Internet commerce, you should aim tonot only to cover the cost of your website, but should develop it to be asource of revenue for your business.A website can allow your company to:            Increase productawareness,            Provide customer service and or support,            Keep your customerbase informed,            Sell your products,            Generate andqualify leads,            Gather feedback,            Expand yourdistribution and customer base,            Compete with BigBusiness. The basic elements that you are going to need to get your websitestarted are a domain name and a hosting company.  There are many companies out there and I haveused several in the past.    Choose ahosting service based not only on their price but on their customer servicelevel.  I have used several in the pastand I am currently migrating all of my Internet activity to GoDaddy.com.  I do not know if they are the best, butcompared to the other companies I have dealt with, there customer service isphenomenal – and it is 24/7/365.    Your next decision is whether you want to design the site yourselfthrough a site builder solution or to have it professionally designed.     Thefastest to get up and running is a site builder solution.  These are available through most hostingcompanies.  You can usually have a basicsite up and running within a day of signing up. The downside to these is that they are not very flexible, they do notlook as professional, and they can be much costlier over the long term.  Usually with these solutions, you pay amonthly fee that can range from $5 to $50 (or more) depending upon thecomplexity of your site to use the site builder solution.  The route that I prefer now is to have the website professionally designedand to have a Content Management System (CMS) installed on the hostingserver.  The CMS allows you to edit thecontent as you desire without the help of the designers and web professionals.  In short, the CMS is very similar to the sitebuilder solution above; except that it does require you to may a repetitivemonthly fee.  The cost to have your site custom designed can range greatly.  For your basic small business website, youcan get a professional site designed from between $250 and $400 if you searchout web designers on services such as oDesk.com or Elance.com. For this rate,you will likely get a professional design firm from India that will create the entirewebsite and uploaded it onto your hosting server for you.  The downside is that it will be moredifficult to communicate due to time zone and cultural differences.  You can expect to pay roughly $750 to $1,500for someone in the United Statesto perform the same work as someone in India.  The advantage is that you will be able tocommunicate much more easily which may be a big advantage if this is your firstendeavor into the world of website design.  For your basic small business website, you should be able to get all ofthis work completed within two to three weeks. Once your site is designed, you are off and running.  Unless you want to hire a search engineoptimization (SEO) specialist, you will need to learn some basic informationabout how search engines work and how to get your website to the first page ofthe search results.    Depending uponyour business, this could be extremely easy to do, or it could be verydifficult and time consuming.Regardless of the method you choose to get your web site up andrunning, you will surely have an added since of visibility and credibility onceyou do.    As I previously stated if youwant to maximize your growth potential, you need a web site.  If you have a true desire to achieve more foryour business, a web site must be a part of your marketing strategy.