Why have your own website?

The time may well be approaching when any business that does not yet have its own website may be considered not up to the mark.  But is it really worth having one just for its own sake?  A recent survey found that a ridiculously high proportion of companies felt that their site was a net cost to them.

Ultimately a commercial site should either save money - by allowing easier communication to customers and/or remote employees - or more likely  bring in more revenue.  This can be achieved by making potential customers aware of you, and by making it easier for existing customers to do business with you.

When considering whether to invest in a website, a business should ask itself what it can do with a website that it is unable to without, and what it does currently that it can do better with a website.

This might all appear to be stating the obvious, but there are clearly organisations out there who have not got this message.

Is your website up to scratch?

A profitable market for developers is people who have thought it would be simple to set up a website in their spare time and wait for all the extra business to pour in.  Either that or they have got their nephew or neighbour or the bloke they met in the pub to do it for them.

But it's not necessarily as straightforward as it may seem.  Even for the simplest site, the design must be thought through so that visitors can find their way around; it must be marketed so that your potential customers can be made aware that it exists; and it must be maintained regularly.  A site that is clearly out-of-date will do more harm than good.

So if it has all turned out to be rather more complicated than you originally thought, let us know.  We can talk things over with you, and maybe take you through a site designed to evaluate your circumstances and requirements and present some ideas for improvements.  This service is free of charge, since we are confident that from our range of products we will find something that will be useful for your situation.

Search engines

If you have a website that is competing in a strong market, and you are looking for national or international exposure, then it is advisable to invest in marketing the site.  Most of the main search engines have packages that either offer the chance of a high placing for specified search words, or, as in the case of Google, offer a service whereby you may appear on the page of results for specified keywords.

However if your site deals with a specialised subject, or your intention is only to look for business in a restricted geographical area, then there may be no need to go for expensive solutions.  Instead concentrate on getting the appropriate keywords, and making sure that the words you expect potential customers to search on appear regularly in your text.  Then submit the site yourself, or use a tool such as SubmitExpress.

One word of warning. Search engines are successful if they can produce results that are what the searcher is looking for.  Various people thought they had come up with dodges that were supposed to fool the software into placing their sites artificially high, such as by repeating keywords excessively.  Not surprisingly the writers of the search engines worked out what was going on and took measures to ensure that such sites would not show up at all.

Search Engine Optimization and Free Submission