If you are like me a lot of your time is spent on the computer. When I hear of a new company or a new product, I instantly go to the computer to conduct a search to find out more about them. Now, what happens when you find nothing on this company? Most consumers when searching for a company to provide services or product, will contact the company which resides closest to their local area. As a business owner, I don’t want to lose any potential new customers to my competition. I can’t afford to! What’s the solution to the problem you ask? Get your business a website.

Let’s look at what happens when someone searches for your business. Suppose as a business owner you’ve paid “big bucks” for a radio ad campaign. Your hope is to reach a targeted audience in a wide network area. Your goal is to draw in prospective clients with whom you can sell your product and close a few sales. Right? So your ad plays on the radio station I’m listening to while I’m in the car running errands. I’ve got a thousand things going through my mind when I hear (in part) your business ad. In all my thoughts and ideas, your business name and product/service is what sticks. Since I’m driving and can’t safely write the name/product/service down, I think to myself “I’ll just look them up when I get back to the office.” When I search for your business, what do I find … ? A listing from the phone book with an address and phone number and no website listed.

Folks, today’s consumers want to “check you out” prior to contacting your business. It affords a level of credibility and assurance that you are indeed a legit business. Having a website developed for your business (big or small) does not have to be an outrageous expense, in order to gain your business a credible presence on the web. As with advertising or marketing agencies, researching your options for web development will work in your favor and give you many different scenarios from which to choose. There are two ways to look at this situation. On one hand you can design a website yourself for a fairly reasonable cost or you can hire a professional web developer to develop a professional site for you that will reflect you and your business in the way it should be. Now, there’s definite truth in the saying “you get what you pay for” in that creating a website yourself might be cost effective, but it requires a lot of time maintaining it and updating.

Notice that I used the term “design” when I mentioned the do-it-yourself option and “develop” when I mentioned hiring a professional. I will discuss the difference between the two in an upcoming blog, so watch for that. The mission of our business, Mainely Technology, is that no business is too small to have a presence on the web and that even a basic one or two page website will give your business an added credibility which is a great compliment to the money you just spent on the advertising campaign for your business.