Why Should Your Company Have a Website?

The answer to this question is neither short nor easy. With a little research you can find hundreds of reasons, but there are a few general statements that may help you realize your needs.

1. Your competitor has one! People refer to the internet as the first source of information, so chances are, if you have a website new potential customers will find you.
2. Presence on the web. A website can reach millions of people that might otherwise not be available for you. Peoples’ habits are changing. People move to a new area and very often rely solely on the Internet to learn about the new area, research and find out who to go to for what.
3. Selling tool. Customers can view products, services, or whatever you want to share from the comfort of their own home. No matter what type of business you are in, there are ways to grow and make money on the web for you.
4. Most people expect that any professionally run business will have a web site. With a well-designed site you can make an impressive first impression; thus potential new business.
5. Add your Web Address to your stationary; business cards, other advertisements and you’ll have visitors knowing exactly where to go for answers to their questions and where to send their friends to for great service.
6. The more people know about you and your company the greater the chances you have for attracting new customers.
7. More Advertising for Less Money. With a web site you can have pages of full-color advertisements that run 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. You get to present yourself and your services to your customers using many descriptive pages, images, etc. This tends to build peoples’ trust, which in turn, makes them more likely to purchase your products and services.
8. Bolster Your Current Ad Campaign. Include your web address in your current ad campaign and people will turn to your site for more information. Gathering more data is often a first response to a well-run ad campaign. With your site address listed in your ad, you will have people coming to you to get that information and your services. A better return on your advertising money is a great reason for a web site.
9. Save Time with Answers to Frequently Asked Questions Online. Do you spend time answering the same types of questions for each of your clients? Well that may never stop but there may be some hope! With a web site you can put the answers to these frequently asked questions online and ask your new customers that you have begun working with to visit these pages. You can even email them out a link to these pages. Your customers will appreciate the knowledge that you will be providing them.
10. Educate Your Customers. The first step of any sale is getting the client familiar with what you are selling. In this day and age more and more people are looking on the Internet to get the information they need to make educated buying decisions. Include articles of interest telling your potential clients about your services. When they call you to discuss your services, half the sale is already done; you’ve already given them your “pitch”. You will even save time (and money) because the ones who do call are interested, warm (and sometimes hot) prospects, not just someone calling to gather data.
11. Get Referrals. Referrals are a number one way for small businesses to get new clients. On your web site you can add a “refer to a friend” link where your current clients (or just visitors) can send your link to a friend who may be interested in your services. This will increase your number of referrals.
12. Create a New Customer Base. Many people are turning to the internet rather than the traditional sources of information (newspapers, yellow pages, etc). With a web site you will be able to reach a whole new segment of potential clients that may have missed your current ad campaigns. A good, informative web site will attract many people who may not have heard of you otherwise.
13. Get Email With your web site you will also get email addresses for your business. On your site will be a link where people will be able to email you for additional information. This is a fast and effective form of communication that enables you to get the answers or information needed for the client at your convenience and send it along.
14. Establish a Relationship with your Clients. People generally prefer to do business with people they “know.” On your site you will give people the opportunity to get to know your business (and perhaps you) and feel more comfortable with you. Once this is established they will be more likely to want to do business with you as compared to the other, similar company about which they know nothing. A picture or profile of you or your associates will make you more real to the client and make the client more likely to contact and communicate with you.
15. Gather Contact Information. A newsletter can be an expensive promotional action. With printing, postage and time spent, the costs can add up. With a website you can have people who would like to receive your newsletter send you their email address. You can then email your newsletter to all of the people in your database. You don’t need to pay for printing or postage for these newsletters. Continual contact with prospects leads to more clients.

This list should get you thinking. A website is a great invesment in your business and knowing how to do a website, what to add and how  to keep it current will pay back in the form of more sales.

Here are the recordings of the class for members of ChiefExperts.com Seminar on Websites. 

Check out this great software for creating a website called XSitePro. If you can type a letter you can create a website. You’ll see XsitePro and other solutions you can use to create and maintain your site.

Another great product that is true;y WSSYWIG is Xara Web Designer

To Your Success!

Dan Baumann

Has Your Web Designer Disappeared?

Here’s what you need, to save your website

A strange phenomena has been spreading like a virus over the past few months. Recently I’ve learned from some people that their website designer has “disappeared.” No return phone calls, unanswered emails. Gone, gone, gone.

Kidnapping? Hardly. When the economy gets tough, many website designers (small business owners themselves) simply go out of business. Some get full-time jobs in corporations, some just shut their doors. If they use a lot of sub-contractors to fulfill project demands, they find that the sub-contractor pool is drying up, and they may become less responsive to your voicemails and emails.

This is a huge problem for small business owners, who rely upon their website designer to maintain and upgrade their websites for them. There’s not much you can do if your website designer goes out of business. But you can protect yourself and prepare yourself to move to a new website designer. You just need to have access to all your files before your website designer disappears.

If you work with a website designer be sure they give you the following information immediately:

• Login information for the hosting company control panel (CP).
• FTP login information.
• Blog login information (this may be different than 1 and 2 above).
• Email address login information for each email account (you may have more than one email address for your domain, such as office@domain.com or mary@domain.com or info@domain.com).
• Other login information to auxiliary software, like membership software, forum software, content management systems, etc.
• Logins for Google Analytics and Google Adwords, if you use either of these services.
• A copy of all your website coding, graphic, audio, video and animation files, including the original source files for all your graphics and Flash files (typically Photoshop for graphics and Flash for animation), on CD or DVD.
• Written confirmation that YOU own the content of the website and have the right to transfer it, edit it, submit it to Federal Copyright Office, sell it, etc.
• For security purposes, if your website designer disappears, change ALL login IDs and passwords on your accounts. In addition, if you have given your website designer your credit card information, you may wish to cancel the card and have a new number re-issued.

We may see more of this happening in 2009. I recommend you get the above items from the person who maintains your website today so that you have full control of your website — and your internet marketing — for the future.

Easy way to add pictures to your site

I just finished uploading pictures to a web page using the free and easy to use website run by yahoo:  www.flickr.com.  I was able to learn how to use the website quickly and after spending a short amount of time navigating through the site, before I knew it, I had edited and organized several of my photos within just a few minutes.  And, yes I did say “free”.

By uploading your photos onto “flickr,” you can organize your photos, edit them using a variety of sizing and coloring tools, add text, and allow others to view your photos on-line.

Organizing and editing your photos on-line makes it easy to add them to your business website.  Pictures are an essential aspect of your website as they allow potential customers to get to know you.  We also recommend using pictures of your previous customers and their projects, in your testimonials.

In addition to posting photos of yourself, your team, and your testimonials, “flickr’s” photo editing capabilities allow you to create unique before and after photos of your projects.  The “create” tab on the photo editing page allows you to get creative with your photos by changing your photo’s shape and adding special effects and frames to help your photos really standout among your competition.

Don’t be afraid!  Try “flickr” to create a more interesting, personal, photo-filled website!

Caron