Are you invisible to potential customers?
According to a one research study I read about recently, nearly 40% of small business do not have a website. If you are one of these businesses you are invisible to the nearly 220 million US Internet users. It’s like having a retail store with no sign, your ARE loosing potential business. Keep in mind that my Grandmother’s 85 year old boyfriend has figured out how to look thinks up on Google, so there are a lot more potential customers on the web then you might think. You need something, it doesn’t have to be large, expensive, or complicated, but you do need something. (Understand that having a website doesn’t mean you will be found — that involves advertising and specialized site design, but not having a site 100% guarantees that you won’t be found!)
Other than presence on the web, what are some of the advantages of having a website?
- It makes your company appear more legitimate.
- You can use your web address on marketing materials and advertising to point people to more information about your company.
- If you start listing your business in on-line directories, you can point to your site for more information.
- Someday (soon) the yellow pages will go away.
What do you do next?
1. Register a domain name. If at all possible get a .com, but .biz addresses are good too.
2. Find a web host. Microsoft Office Live will host your site for free (yes, free). They also have templates you can use to build the site. Currently I use GoDaddy.com‡ for my site and blog.
3. Design your site. Most hosting companies offer either free or paid packages to help you design your site.
(By the way, when you setup your hosting, you can usually setup an email address that uses your domain name. Do that. Nothing screams ‘fly-by-night’ more than an @hotmail, @gmail, @aol, or @yahoo address for a business)
If you don’t want to do it yourself, hire someone to do it for you (like my company‡), it won’t be that expensive, and it will be worth it in the long run.
Resources
Solutions4Tech for for Website Design (Thats me!)‡
GoDaddy.com for domain registration and hosting‡
