Back in the old days if you needed information concerning a business or a service, you had to pull out the old Yellow Pages. You then fumbled through the pages trying to find the right category, and ran your finger down a long list of various businesses, and made phone calls to find out what they offered and what they charged. If your own business was placed in the correct category, and it began with “A” or “B”, then there was a chance you might get some calls and maybe convert calls into customers. But the Yellow Pages have long since just become something to step on to reach higher on a shelf somewhere.
If you really want to get noticed today, you need an internet presence. People are seeing Yahoo, Google, and Bing instead of the old Yellow Pages. This makes your website extremely important. It’s far more than just some Ad on a page full of Ads that showcases your business. It becomes a representation of you company image and is interactive with your customers online. If your business is a brick & mortar one, then no doubt you spent lots of time and lots of money to make your presence known, as well as to display the kind of image you want your company to have. You want to be thought of as ‘professional’. Online it’s your website that you do this with. And first impressions are extremely important.
If a visitor comes to your site through a search for whatever you are selling, the first thing they see is your website. And this is before they make the decision to call you by phone or to buy something from off your site. So whatever impression they get about your business in the first few seconds goes a long way toward that decision of whether they want to do business with you, or to move on. On the bright side, you can make a unique and inspiring impression very easily on a website, much more so than in an office.
Most business sites will range in the $1,000 to $2,000 price. And a customer may be of the opinion that it’s a lot for a website. But these are usually just people searching for a cheaper price. But when you think about it, what about the price for doing business in an office? How much for utilities and employees, furnishings, and decor? Add that up and these prices listed above are quite reasonable. It doesn’t take long to see that a website is much more sensible from a financial standpoint than running an office. For what they would pay out over each month or even six weeks, they can have 24/7 services running, complete with image booster, a sales person and receptionist, and good marketing tools all in one tool. And you can make changes to the site for next to nothing when you so desire.
So study your website and consider what kind of first impression it makes. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and make sure it looks like a place where you would like to do business.
Tags: online business, web designers, web developers, web presence, website, website development
