11 Reasons Why You Should Have a Web Site

By Jennifer Farley | Mar 30 2007 |

1. To Establish A Presence
Approximately 750 million people worldwide have access to the World Wide Web (WWW). No matter what your business is, you can’t ignore 750 million people.

2. To Make Business Information Available
What is basic business information? Think of a Yellow Pages ad. What are your hours? What do you do? How can someone contact you? What methods of payment do you take? Where are you located? Now think of a Yellow Pages ad where you have instant communication. What is today’s special offer? Today’s interest rate? Next week’s sale information? If you could keep your customer informed of every reason why they should do business with you, don’t you think you could do more business? You can on the WWW.
3. To Heighten Public Interest
With Web page information, anybody anywhere who can access the Web and hears about you is a potential visitor to your Web site and a potential customer for your information there. People from other towns, counties and even other countries can find out information about who you are and what you do.

4. To Network
A lot of what passes for business is simply nothing more than making connections with other people. Every smart business person knows, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Passing out your business card is part of every good meeting and every business person can tell more than one story how a chance meeting turned into the big deal. Well, what if you could pass out your business card to thousands, maybe millions of potential clients and partners, saying this is what I do and if you are ever in need of my services, this is how you can reach me. You can, 24 hours a day, inexpensively and simply, on the WWW.

5. To Sell Things
Before people decide to become customers, they want to know about you, what you do and what you can do for them. Which you can do easily and inexpensively on the WWW. Then you might be able to turn visitors to your site into customers.

6. To reach a highly desirable demographic market
The demographic of the WWW user is probably the highest mass-market demographic available. Usually college-educated or being college educated, making a high salary or soon to make a high salary, it’s no wonder that Wired magazine, the magazine of choice to the Internet community, has no problem getting Lexus and other high-end marketers advertising. Even with the addition of the commercial on-line community, the demographic will remain high for many years to come.

7. To Answer Frequently Asked questions
Whoever answers the phones in your company can tell you, their time is usually spent answering the same questions over and over again. These are the questions customers and potential customers want to know the answer to before they deal with you. Post them on a WWW page and you will have removed another barrier to doing business with you and freed up some time for that harried phone operator.

8. To Make Changing Information Available Quickly
Sometimes, information changes before it gets off the press. Now you have a pile of expensive, worthless paper. Electronic publishing changes with your needs. No paper, no ink, no printers bill. You can even attach your web page to a database which customizes the page’s output to a database you can change as many times in a day as you need. No printed piece can match that flexibility.

9. To Allow Feedback From Customers
With a Web page, you can ask for feedback and get it instantaneously with no extra cost. An instant e-mail response can be built into Web pages and can get the answer while its fresh in your customers mind, without the cost and lack of response of business reply mail.

10. To Reach The Specialized Market
Sell bee hives, art prints, rowing boats? You may think that the Internet is not a good place to be. Well, think again. The Internet isn’t just computer science students anymore. With the 700 million and growing users of the WWW, even the most narrowly defined interest group will be represented in large numbers. Since the Web has several very good search programs, your interest group will be able to find you, or your competitors.

11. To Serve Your Local Market
We’ve talked about the power to serve the world with a Web page. But what about your own town? If you are located in Westmeath, Cork, Sligo or Dublin, there is probably enough local customers with Web access to make it worth your while to consider Web marketing. A local Blackrock sandwich bar even takes lunch orders through the Internet!

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Posted by Jennifer Farley | Filed Under Small Business, Website Building 

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Comments

2 Responses to “11 Reasons Why You Should Have a Web Site”

  1. Andrew on November 15th, 2007 12:11 pm

    12. Necessity

    Today people expect your company to have a website. Many people only do business with company’s that have a website.

  2. Jennifer on November 15th, 2007 2:32 pm

    Absolutely, Andrew.

    Thanks for visiting!

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