Before you make any decision about the website for your business, I would recommend reading through this article.
Before you come to any decision whether you need website or not for your business please ask your self few questions as listed bellow.
How big your business is?
One clear question to ask is how big your business is? If you are operating in local environment and there is no possibility of going global then possibly you might not need website as it will not give you any real value to your business except just website address on your business cards, if you have one.
Where do you want to take your business?
If you have small business running in local suburb, and you want to take it to new level, then you might want start thinking of having website. You need to check the level of possible growth. If you are running a laundry shop and you are thinking of getting customer from other countries then probably you are day dreaming as this business can not grow beyond the local city. Yes you can grow but only if you start a local outlet. So depend where you want to take your business to. If you think there is possibility of growing to more geographic area then yes this is the best time you can get website.
How do you want to serve your customers?
Many companies and many products need special customer service. Like they need more information they make decision and all information is not possible to give over the phone or personally. At that time you might want to create website and put all the information over website so multiple people can read it at their own time. That way website can bring real value to business and help reduce cost of customer service.
What do you want your customers to think about your business?
Sometimes you need website to build strong corporate presence. so it looks like professional presence. Again it depend on you how you want your customer to think about your business. If you think you need your customer to think about you as a highly professional and corporate business then probably you don’t need website as it will not bring real value to your business.
What geographic do you want to target?
If you are looking to target only one local area, then probably you are better off not having website as it will be easy for your customer to walk in and chat to you instead of going over your website. At any area I guess that all of your customers would not be internet savvy. If you want to target large geographic area then you should start thinking about website. Website can take your business to global level if you have proper product to offer.
What level of internet access your customer will have?
Sometimes you have large client base spread across the globe but they are not internet savvy. So before you decide you have website, think about their internet knowledge and adaptability. If they are not interested in going over internet or they are too old to learn internet or using computers then there is no point having website for them. Such as old age people’s product specially distributed to them directly will serve no purpose having website. But if you are distributing those products to agency or your dealers then yes you must have website as it will create very easy distribution flow and give vast information over your website and also reduce your involvement in all process saving your time.
Apart from these questions you can ask few more questions to your self about your business and what your business wants to gain from your website. There are many benefits associated with website. Few are listed bellow:
24X7 customer server
If you have website you can provide 24X7 customer service very easily. You can list out many FAQ and detailed solutions to many problems related to your product, such as installation, use and operating etc. your customer don’t need to call your business for learning it on how to use it. This way you can save many $$$ on customer care and also build strong image for providing 24X7 customer service.
Wide geographic coverage
By having website you can cover wide geographic area which otherwise you cannot cover with tradition business. even if you don’t have offices in different cities or different countries you can server them by mean of website. Now a days ecommerce websites are selling product across the glob without having a single office any country.
Reduced over head
By having website you can reduce many cost such as customer service, sales and marketing, many order tracking etc.
Reduce manpower needs
You can reduce manpower needs as your website do many things for you. You don’t need to put many people in customer care centre, you can reduce sales team, you can reduce cost of marketing as your website will work for you 24X7 even while you are sleeping. That way you can have many benefits of having website.
Fast product information release
If you want to release something like new product introduction, or change in products, or new information about products you can release it very fast by just putting it on your website. You don’t need to do any other form of marketing to inform your customer base about this change.
Fast and efficient customer feedback
Your customer can leave feedback at anytime. Customer feedback is very valuable now days as it gives you a chance to improve your service.
After answering these questions you can easily decide whether you need website or not? Once you decide to have website for your business what should you do? How to get it? Whom to contact?
To have website you need one website address. That is called domain name. you need to find one suitable domain for your business. There are many companies around providing cheap and secure domain. You can check on http://www.realtrack.com.au/cheap-domains.php to get good domain for your business. Then you need website hosting and website designing. You can visit http://www.RealTrack.com.au for best all in one solution for your business website.
Once you get website done you need to manage it and update it regularly so you can get good ranking in Google. Once you get good ranking in Google you can get very good traffic back to your website which will bring more visitors and more business to you.
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