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Let's face this; a website is very important for your business, and it's very effective and affordable. Questions arise, why and how? The answer is:
The Ordinary Way
If you are a business owner, you know exactly the importance of letting people know the services and products offered by your company. That's why you spend thousands of ringgit for the business' signboard with the hope that people who passed by that area will notice it, right? Then you spend a few more thousands of ringgit for the publicity purpose such as advertising on the newspaper and distributing thousands of brochures door to door. That's what we do, right? We do the same. Then, those business cards, telephone calls, facsimile machines, mobile phones, customer service counters and you hire the employees for the job of phone operators, customer services, marketing executives, sales people and etc. So why are we doing all this? Does it mean when other people does it, we must follow? Or because we know that it is the basic thing that we should do for our business so that it will be noticed in order to attract business. Yes, that is what we all must do. But, have you ever ask yourself, how many people will passed by my area to see my signboard, how many people will notice the spot of my advertisement in the newspaper, how many people throw away our brochures into the dustbins? How long can my advertisement last? How many times and how many copies of brochures can I / must I distribute? So what's the problem we are facing here? The expiry of the content! The resources, the time, the money and the efforts spent just for a short time scale of the marketing campaign! Let me clarify one point: I'm not saying that you shouldn't put your efforts on that, but are there any other cost effective solutions that will achieve the same or even better results? Yes, and I think you already know what it is.
The Digital Business Way
Having a website immediately eliminates that extra expenses in turns of saving hundreds and it will be permanent there at no additional cost at all. Your website will be there for partners, suppliers, prospects, customers, clients, patients, staff, friends, contacts & the people that you routinely deal with; 24/7, 365 days a year! So getting your business on the web puts you ahead of your competitors. And, if your competitors owns a website, getting a better web site gives you a level up.
Cost Effective & Way Smarter
As we understand from the previous paragraph, your website will be there permanently. Its the best employee you will ever hire. It will work for you 24 hours a day, 7days a week and it will never call-in sick or asks for a vacation. It will advertise your business exactly the way you want it to and it will never provide wrong information. If you decide to change the information, you can click and edit it and your web site will tell a different story in seconds. You don't have to re-print the brochures and make thousands of copies to distribute it. You don't need to re-advertise it so frequently on the newspaper or other media because your website states it all. And let us think in another perspective, if you still need to distribute brochures or advertise it on the newspapers or magazines, don't you think by including your website address, it will provide more choices for the people to access the information of your services and products? Let's consider the scenario like this: a person passed by your company and notice that there is a website address on your business signboard, as he/she goes home or goes to the office and log on to the internet to access your company's website, they will sit comfortably in their house / office to read the content of your website. Contents which consists information about services and products offered by your company. In their house or office, comfortably, no hassle no rush, this will directly increase the chances of them dealing with you due to the fact that customers like to communicate without a high pressure sale pitch. And the same goes to your brochures, business cards, yearly calenders and etc, you can always include your website address so anyone who is interested, they'll know how to access it to retrieve more information of your services and products.
Reaching Local & Global Market
Let's flash back to the 50s where telephone is an expensive device to have. Not everyone can have a telephone or is willing to pay for it either for their home usage or for their business. Still remember that when we need to make a call or wait for a call, we have to "borrow" it from our neighbours or even walk miles away for the public phone to find out its already out of service? Those old days huh. But now, telephones or mobile phones are so common that even a primary school student owns one. So what this has to do with a website? But before you ask this question, you should ask why are we making calls or answering calls? Thats because we want to communicate. We want to reach somebody, some information; a mother calls her son to ask how are his studies in another country, a boy call his girlfriend to invite her out for a date, a businessman calls his customers to answer questions, a customer calls the business owner to inquire about the services and products. Thats the information; the communication that we are talking about. We don't make phone calls and keep silence. We don't make phone calls and go do something else. When we call or answer a call, we talk, we deliver message, information vocally. At the earlier age of the telephone, it's so rare, but now, almost everyone have a mobile phone. Ways of reaching and to sending information has become so easy and efficient. Books, newspapers, TV, radios, telephones, mobile phones, SMSes and Internet are ways of how we can send and retrieve information. We already know this since we were young. So right now, it is the time of digital business, it is the era of information technology. Website will come in and play its role. It's a dot com world! Your website will be the gateway for people to reach your services & product, and thus, you are reaching the market through the Internet and your website. Websites will eventually become a must-have for a business, it's no longer an extra tool, it's no longer an expensive toy, but it will become a basic and a necessity.
The important point in this paragraph, information is so important for a business no matter what kind of business you are doing. Here we are talking about the evolution of communication. Computers & Internet will eventually become so common that in every family, there will be one. So if you have your business website setup on the internet, you are actually putting your business 24/7, 365 days a year by providing a more timely information on your products, pricing, updates, company literature, manuals, and answers to commonly asked questions. The beauty of this is the speed and ease in how these things can be offered on a 24 hour-a-day basis.
Website For All Types of Business
You might ask: "My business is very small, just me and another employee, and our products really can't be sold online. Do I really need a website?" The answer is yes, and why not. Having a website doesn't really mean you must sell products online. There are many types of website, for example; a company/business website, an e-commerce website, a personal website, a family website and etc. If your business or your products can't be sold online, you can still put your company's information on the website. You can put the products & services and company contacts on the website so that people will learn about it and your company before walking in your company to deal with you. For a simple and direct example, a person from KL wants to find a car rental service in Langkawi. So he/she will type the keyword "langkawi car rental" in search engines, and if you have a website, your website will appear as one of the search results. They will find your services and contact info, and this is how a potential customer reaches you. It makes sense, right? And this was done because of a company/business website, not yet a high-end e-commerce enabled website. Also, don't be so quick to dismiss your product as one that can't be sold online. Nowadays, there's very little that can't be sold over the internet. More than 20 million shoppers are now online, purchasing everything from books to computers to cars to real estate to jet airplanes to natural gas to anything else. If you can imagine it, someone will figure out how to sell it online, this is for e-commerce website, selling things online, receiving orders and making online payment as well as delivering the products offline through the traditional way. When it comes to benefits of a website, size does not matter. It doesn't matter whether it's a one-man show or a corporate giant; if you don't have a website, you're losing business to other companies that do.
Not having a website these days or worse a site not reflecting the quality of your business can create a detrimental perception among your market, customers, and vendors. This is especially true, if customers expect a website to be a common part of the business that you are in. There is no good answer when a customer asks why they cannot locate your website on the Internet.
Everyone Gets Connected
Your website will acts as the platform for your potential customer, existing customers, employees and for yourself in many aspects. How? From what we understand from previous paragraphs, your website will be there 24/7 and 365 days a year. Potential customers from all around the world will find and locate your website. Your website offers a plethora of opportunities to the business, but aside from everything listed above, you've got all the space, all the colour, all the words and pictures that enable you to do nothing more revolutionary than simply to sell your goods and services. Your website can become a tremendous sales support piece to your marketing or promotions. This especially is true when you utilize the website as a complete literature piece or an expanded web-brochure explaining the full story of a product or service. The website can be a tremendous competitive differential advantage to sales and support personnel as it provides for the customers or potential customers to be directed to full collateral material and the most current product and company information.
Your website will be found useful for your existing customer. It has been proven that customers do not mind helping themselves electronically in order to get information or buy products that they desire. In fact, customers have come to expect some elements of website self-help to be available to them. No question that the old paradigm of doing business has shifted in large part thanks to the ease of the interface with the company website. Vendors and partner relationships can also be improved by this ease of access to information. Allowing customers to help themselves as well as vendors and partners to help themselves and help you at the same time.
If your employees are spread over a large geographical area, you can keep them inform of all the relevant information via the company website. And this is extremely useful to the sales team in your company by making your website as a marketing kit so that they know where to go for the latest information on the services and products that they are going to sale, no more meeting with your sales person, no more manual books / marketing kit to be re-distribute to them, all you have to do is to ask them to login to the company's website and everything will be there ready for them.
The Conclusion
Yes, now we all know a website is very important for our business in so many aspects. Stop jumping into the 50s and ask yourself "Why should i have a telephone for my business?" or jump into the 80s to ask "Why should I have a computer and Internet?". You are now in the digital age and you should ask why i haven't own a website yet.
A simple, short and straight forward point to conclude for this long article: having a website for business is becoming "NORMAL BUSINESS PRACTICES"
Author
Smith Tan - 1StopWeb800.com Reproduction Rights
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