Why Build a Web Site?

The email said, “Thanks for working on the web site. I’ve had so many great comments about it.” The email came from Michelle Akers back in 1996. I was on a team that had built her a web site before she headed off as the captain of the women’s soccer team at the Atlanta Olympics. After winning the gold medal she was inundated with well wishers at her site and she couldn’t be happier.

In the many years since that first web site I’ve worked on more than 200 web sites in roles ranging from copywriter to project manager to designer. After working in print for several years before that, I loved how flexible web sites are and how you can do so much with it. And I’m always surprised when I hear that a business doesn’t have a web site.

I was just at conference about local search engine marketing about we learned that 70 percent of the local businesses don’t have a web site and yet still want to be found by on the Internet. How are they supposed to be able to do that?

There are several ways that a local business can be found without a web site but we’ll discuss that in subsequent articles. But any business will benefit from having a web site, especially if some day you plan on selling your business. A good web site will be an asset of your business, especially one that is getting visitor traffic and sales leads.

If you don’t have a web site already, why have you been putting it off? There are several reasons why someone wouldn’t build a web site. One, the finances might be too tight. Maybe you think you need thousands of dollars to create a good web site of value. There are plenty of places where you can create an inexpensive web site. You can always have a good web site designed for you when finances aren’t so tight.

Another reason why companies don’t have a web site is because the owner is too busy trying to run your business to concentrate on a web site. A web site takes time to write the content and to gather pictures and such.

One last reason for not designing a site is because it can be intimidating. There are quite a few technical aspects to consider in putting together a site. You don’t have to be a computer genius to create a web site. There are some places on the web where it is almost as easy to create a document in Microsoft Word as it is to develop a site.

But let’s take a look at why you should have a web site and the value it can add to your business.

Marketing Your Company

You can market your business on the Internet for a local business. All you have to do is figure out what kind of terms people are using to try to find a company likes yours, and then you build your site around these terms. It would also be good to put a map to your business if you are a store of some sort. Or if you are a service, you can put your hours of operation and areas that you serve. And you could put prices.

By having a good site, you can show up in the organic listings of the search engines, but you can also use the site as a landing spot for sponsored listings. Services like Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search can be used to market your company on a pay per click basis.

Sell Your Product

If you have a product you can actually sell then you can sell it on your site to people all over the U.S. and the world (if you want to ship overseas). By selling your product online, your store will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Supporting Your Clients

We have developed many sites that provide information for the customers of our clients. You can put many things on your site that will help your customers. You can create FAQs, have downloadable instructions or just more information about your product or service that will allow them to get answers to their questions, which will save you time from having to answer the phone at your business.

Build Something of Value

Because web sites are made up of a bunch of pictures and words, you’d like it wouldn’t have much value, but it’s the traffic that that will be of value once the traffic has build up over time. If you decide to sell your business, it can be an asset that you can sell along with your business.

It’s hard to believe that company doesn’t have a web site in these days, but creating a web site can be an intimidating task for those who aren’t technical. But in the end, it’s worth it to create a web site to aid in your business and add value to it.

Dave Carlson is a Google Registered Adwords Professional and owns Green Chair Marketing Group, a Denver Internet marketing firm specializing in driving visitors to web sites by search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, and web site design/redesign. Call him at 720-922-3124