Sign Up For Our Free Web Design Ecourse! Plus 2 Free Design Videos

Name:
Email:

Design Options

Web Design 101

Master the Art of Building Web Pages With This Proven, Step By Step Guide ... No HTML!- We have outlined step by step all of the resources and steps to creating your own professional looking website 100% for free in this terrific report. "Website Building 101"

Not only do we show you free resources to find fantastic looking templates, graphics, and hosting for free, we also show you step by step what to do to get your website online in about 2 hours!

Top 5 Reasons Every Business Should Have a Website
By Michelle Timothy

If you want to be in business of any kind on the internet you need a web site, Period. It is your virtual store front or virtual business card. It is the only way for people to get to know you, form an image of your company or service and put a 'virtual face' to the emails they receive. If you are already in business offline, you may want to consider coming online to increase your business and embrace the wave of the future before it leaves you too far behind. Consider these reasons below.

Top 5 Reasons to get a web site; When I say 'get a web site' I mean 'doing business online' (providing information, sharing your knowledge, promoting your interests and selling yourself, your products or your services). There is no other reason to 'get a web site' for your business, unless you are hoping to do business on the internet, so here follows a list of good reasons why should choose the internet as a marketing vehicle for your product or service.

  1. If you have an offline business getting a web site can increase revenue and reduce customer service man hours. You can put commonly asked questions about your business online and refer to it in all of your printed material. People actually prefer to visit a web site and maintain control as they browse for information, rather than call a business just to inquire about something obvious or simple. Try it, list your web address with your 800 number and watch as the simple inquiry calls to your phone line decrease! The quality of the phone calls you receive will improve as the length of the calls decrease because by the time they call they have some information from the web site!

  2. Having a web site can replace a brick and mortar store front for certain services and/or lower the cost of customer acquisition and over head simultaneously. Certain services can survive 100% on the internet. Most services need a combination of both online and offline advertising. Offline advertising is considerably more expensive than online advertising. Take advantage of the internet for its cheaper advertising rates and easy advertising tracking options. It is really simple to calculate your cost per customer down to the penny. Using online tracking tools that can tell you so much about what the customer is doing or not doing on your web site and in your emails and that information can help you improve your ad campaigns.

  3. To reach a global market. It would be terribly expensive to advertise to reach a global market offline. Most local businesses never do it. On the internet you can reach customers on other continents for just pennies.

  4. If your service or product is very unique and targeted to a specific group, going online can increase your pool of prospects. People tend to flock to their interests online. There are countless groups and web sites dedicated to every small area of interest. Got a new product for people who wear bow ties? You'll find them online and you'll likely be able to spy on them and gather more information about them from the comfort of your home simply by joining their communities and observing what they talk about.

  5. If your product or service is digital in nature and requires little or no face to face contact. If you are selling information, digital goods, or merchandise that can be shipped via mail. You most likely do not need an offline presence. You can build your business through just your web site, email and phone contact.


It wouldn't be fair if I didn't also tell you the reasons why you shouldn't go online as well so here goes; Top 5 reasons NOT to get a web site;  

  1. Making money online is not as easy as setting up a web page. You'll need to build interest and traffic to your site. You'll also need convincing ad copy to sell your goods, if you are providing content you need to provide interesting and pertinent content. Good copy writers are not cheap. Web designers can be equally expensive. If you do not hire out these services you'll have to learn how to do them yourself.

  2. You cannot build a business, make money and market online 100% for free, and you shouldn't expect to. Getting traffic, finding customers, learning about online marketing, getting the software and services you need to run a successful business will cost you some money, if it doesn't, it will cost you in other ways down the line. The up side is that the costs are considerably lower than starting and maintaining a business offline.

  3. The learning curve is steep. There are so many things to learn. Although you do not need to know them all, you should eventually become aware of them all. Then choose the method that suits you best.

  4. It is not easy and you will not get rich quick. Online marketing is simple on one hand, but it is not easy. Most of the details in running a web site and marketing are tedious. Almost all of it is done using some sort of software. So if you hate software, the internet and/or computers "this 'aint for you!" . If you are looking for a way to make a lot of money fast you will be very disappointed by the amount of time needed to nurture your business. If you are looking to make a fortune 'easily and quickly', buy a lotto ticket.

  5. You will spend countless hours staring at your monitor , fondling a mouse and banging away at a keyboard. The worst part is you won't want to be doing anything else! Checking your web site/visitor stats, email and bank account balances will consume you. Your friends and family will think you need to be committed. Eventually you will want to automate most of your online business tasks and there is software out there to help you do that.

 

Still interested?

Then this might be the thing for you. Even if you have no product or service, you can still generate income online by recommending other people's products or services. This type of business generally demands that you become an expert at 'marketing' online in some capacity. Simply put, becoming an expert at 'marketing online' means, learning the art of finding the customer that would be interested in buying a product or service building a relationship with them and then introducing them to that product or service.

In my opinion there are 2 types of businesses online, people who create and provide a tangible and useful product or service and the people who help them sell it. The internet is so vast that the 2 have become intricately intertwined and cannot be separated at the moment. This creates a wealth of opportunity for anyone who is willing to dive into the many (sometimes confusing) areas of online marketing, learn it and master it.

If you are a business owner who has a product or service to sell online, you are most likely too busy to spend the hours it will take to market your product effectively and rightfully so; you need to focus on providing the greatest service or product. In order to stay in business you will need to rely on what are known as 'associates' or 'affiliates' who do nothing but market and build relationships with groups of people that would be interested in what you offer. They help you get your product or service sold, through referrals, reviews and testimonials.

So you see both are very vital operations. One are product and service owners/creators who focus on themselves, their business, their service and their product. and the other are 'Associates' who build relationships by focusing on the customer and what they want. Ok back to why you should get a web site. People who come online are not usually online with their credit cards in hand ready and willing to spend their money. They come online for 2 reasons;

  1. Information
  2. Entertainment

If in the process of obtaining either one of the two they find a product or service that can solve a problem for them, they may become interested in buying it. So to approach people you don't know and push them to buy your product or service will only cost you money in the long run as you spend and spend on acquiring new customers to sell to. It will also get you a bad reputation and labeling that used to be reserved for a particular type of canned, processed meat product.

If you are planning to sell anything at all, your web site needs to focus on providing information to the person who is online browsing for a solution to their problem or stay strictly to the one page sales letter law of the 'net. Choose one or the other . no in between. Internet spending is increasing as more software becomes available to protect the consumer. I think we all know already that there is money being made online. The idea that money is freely being given away online to anyone with a web site is very wrong though. There is a steep learning curve for making a business successful online. Be prepared to learn, make a few mistakes and hopefully make some money in the process.