Should You Have A Website?

There are a lot of people who have websites (or webpages) in this world. There are a lot more, however, who don't have websites. When it comes to business, a general question that has to be asked is whether it's viable for the owners of that business to have a website or not.

As an internet marketing consultant, the overall answer is easily yes. The reality, however, isn't so cut and dry. Let's explore the positives first.

A website can be a great extension of your advertising, if done properly. If you have products, it's a great place to not only share information about them, but, if applicable, you could set your site up to sell your product at all times of the day. A website can highlight your expertise, tell everyone what you do, tell something about you, and allow you to share your expressiveness with a whole new audience of people. If marketed properly, your website can see a whole lot more people than you'd ever meet.

And one great thing about having a website is that, even if you don't really do business online, it offers you many ways to accept credit card payments if your business doesn't presently accept them. For instance, for this business, I accept credit card payments by sending people online links that will direct them through Paypal so they can use their credit cards. Paypal takes 2.89%, but that's a small price to pay for having my money quickly, as it allows me to transfer funds to my bank account immediately and have them in my bank account within 3 days, sometimes sooner. There are other services out there that offer similar services, though.

However, there's the other side. A website can make you look bad if the site doesn't look good, or isn't uniform. If you write the copy yourself and you're a terrible writer, it can highlight shortcomings that you may not want others to see. If your product doesn't photograph well, or can't be easily explained, it could make marketing difficult. There's a dicey balance between trying to show yourself as an individual that people can trust as well as a professional who's open and inviting to strangers.

Then there's this thing about keeping your website fresh and interesting, not only to the people who visit but to the search engines. The best optimization in the world won't help your site out if, once it's completed, you let it go and never do anything else with it. Search engines such as Google will send out what they call spiders, that will go through your site and rank its validity. If nothing changes after a long time, they stop coming by on a regular basis. When that happens, you could drop off the face of the search engine universe, which means that the only people who will find your product are the ones who know to look for you. If that's what you want, fine, but if you want more, that's not going to work.

So, websites take one of two things; time or money. Either the owner has to learn at least a little bit of HTML to consistently make changes and alterations, as well as, hopefully, add content, or the owner has to have the money to pay someone to do that for them on a regular basis.

Also, a new owner has to make a decision how they want to spend their money, and what a website is worth to them. For instance, there are many hosts that offer the opportunity to create a free site, usually a one page site. If you're a business, it doesn't look good for you because your business name isn't highlighted as much as the host, such as Freewebs, Homestead, etc. You also can't optimize your site, because it's not really your site.

You could decide to use one of many programs to create your own site to upload, and I've seen a few people who have done a nice job with it, but formatting pages so they look uniform can take time, and also some knowledge, and if you're not the type for that then you probably shouldn't go there.

Depending on what you want, creating websites can take a lot of time, or will cost you some significant dollars. There are some companies that have templates you can use and then work on customizing, but they pretty much look like other sites. However, if you go to someone like myself, it's not cheap, but there are varying degrees of costs, based on what you want. So, before you pay any money, talk with the person you're thinking of using to try to decide just what you might want. For instance, I had one client who, when we first talked, said she only wanted five pages, which wouldn't have cost that much or taken long to complete. By the time we were finished, we were over 15 pages, with research on top of the creation of the site, and the cost ended up in the thousands. This client was ready to pay it; are you ready to pay it?

The same thinking has to come into play if you think you want to add a blog. I hate cruising blogs, only to see that many of them haven't had an entry in over six months, sometimes years. Blogs aren't for the uninspired; it takes some kind of discipline to continually write entries, and, if you're writing a business blog, the worst thing to have is a blog that has no recent activity. Some people try to write on a niche that's too tight, and they find that it's hard being confined to that one thing, so they just stop writing. If you don't really believe that you have enough in you to consistently keep updating it, then it's best not to start.

So, should you have a website? Time and money; if you have either, then yes. If not, then no. At least make an informed decision either way. For a quick, down and dirty list, click on this website outline of pros and cons, or call me, your internet marketing consulting professional.

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