3 Reasons to Take Your Business Online
In my journey into web design I have come across an interesting phenomenon. When I speak with business owners, I find that that they tend to over look the importance of having a professional looking website. Mostly I find this when speaking to the 40 and older crowd. Anyone in the younger age range seems to understand that the future of business is going online. A friend and I were discussing how she now uses her telephone books for kindle and how her family does all her searches for goods and services online via search engines. So I decided to write a quick blog explaining some good reasons your business should have a professional design a great looking website to market your business. I emphasize the fact that you should have a professional do it. Here is why:
1. As stated by my friend. 90% of people nowadays search for goods and services online via search engines. For example, when my wife and I want to order pizza, I go to Google, type in “pizza, Chicago, il” and up pops all the local pizza places in our 5 mile radius. Here is the catch. People will usually ignore your business if you have a poorly designed website, or even worse, your missing out on that business if you have no website at all.
2. You should have a professional do it. As a small business owner, you don’t have time to tinker around with html code, css and search engine optimization. How much have you used photoshop if your in the flooring business? Or perhaps your a building contractor, do you really know the difference between Helvetica typeface and Calson? Save yourself some time and hire a professional. There are tons of students out there or new business owners like myself that do good work for affordable cost. Consider it as part of your marketing.
3. You say “Well I’m already in the phonebook” or “I advertise on radio or other print ads”. Yes, but how much money are you spending and how effective has your marketing been? To have a clean looking, beautiful website built will provide you with 5-6 pages of full color marketing material you can advertise to your prospective customers. Your website can tell your customers much more about you, your services and pricing than magazine ads can. Plus, you can track the demographics from your website personally to see who your getting hits from so you can target your services better.
These are just 3 small reasons to take your business online if you already haven’t. If you already have a website, you might want to consider a re-design or updating the site. Hire a professional designer to do it. Please don’t let your teen age cousin do it or nephew. (Unless they know what they are doing). There are plenty of good companies and respectable firms out there that can help you make those design decisions.
