Is it necessary all businesses have a website and how much money should they invest in it?

October 18th, 2009 by Bruce

All companies will benefit from some presence on the internet, even if it is only a simple listing on a site such as yell.com or one of the other business directory sites. That way, even if customers would not contemplate ordering your product or service over the net at least they can find your address details so that they can pop in.

It may be that a little more information would be of use to the customer, say for example you are a wedding shop the chances of a bride buying a dress from you over the internet are slender but she may very well want to know a few things about your business before deciding whether to pop in. Times of opening will be important as will knowing if a meeting is required. She may also want to find out what price range of dresses you sell, which designers you work with and whether you sell accessories, bridesmaid dresses etc. All of this information means that a small 3 or 4 page website would be well received by a customer base who are more and more used to locating what they want on the internet.

That said, the business you will attract will still be comparatively local as people will come to visit you in person so there is no requirement to spend huge amounts on listing the full range of your stock, having images of everything taken and offering a “buy on line” service available. The cost of a useful simple information website should only be a few hundred pounds and there is no need to spend on Online Marketing or worry about your Search Engine Placement as customers will search for you via your shop name.
Other businesses, whose customer base is more suited to national or international sales will need to invest heavily in their website if they are to tap into the potential of the net. If we look at a business that sells car windscreen wipers on line we can see the difference straight awat. If the customer knows that the wipers she spots on the website will fit her car and that they are a reasonable price she will buy from wherever she is. This could mean national and international purchases for the company that they would simply not get from having a shop on a high street. Money spent on Online Marketing provided by a Search Engine Optimization Company is however in this illustration crutial. If you do not have a good search engine position none of those potential customers will find you as they will not know you by name; so outlay in both site development and Search Engine Placement is crutial.

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Is an internet designer the best person to ensure your site is optimized

October 17th, 2009 by Bruce

Once an organizational website has been constructed, with all the necessary elements in place and all facilities working, the ideal scenario is that it will start to work positively for the company without delay. Ideally the website should be detectible immediately to the customers it can satisfy and it should be easy for these customers to find it. However that can only ensue if the website is optimized, making certain that the search engines know it is there and exactly what it offers. The Search Engine Placement position is also a critical element here.

Hopefully your web designer will have incorporated a certain amount of optimization whilst the site was under construction. It may be that optimization was actually part of the offering although this usually just equates to the accurate naming of web pages and meta tags and keywords being added into the coding. This intensity of optimization is unlikely to deliver any useful new business from the site unless you have hardly any competition as it really is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can in reality be achieved by optimization.

As good as the web designer is, the chance of him being able to provide a truly valuable optimization product is minimal. Web designers are generally very IT literate and their skills lie in their ability to skillfully make technical websites using coding etc. The skills required to execute the functions necessary of a Search Engine Optimization Company are much closer to those of a traditional marketing professional. They need to have the ability to understand the customers that are appropriate to the business product or service. They need to be able to appreciate the needs of those customers and, in addition to the typical marketing skills, they need to understand how that customer would search to satisfy their need on the internet.

These kinds of attributes are not usually ones that a good web designer has needed to develop and this is why there is now opening up a new career prospect for people less skilled in programming and coding but more naturally able to recognize the needs of customers and to think from their point of view. These people, possibly taught in traditional marketing methods, may be the ideal ones to conduct search engine optimization positions which are becoming fundamental to many companies large and small who want to trade on the net.

The job possibilities in these search engine optimization roles are growing rapidly, with many businesses now looking to have their sites optimized. It may be that we see a new career develop for people who would not normally consider applying for a role in Online Marketing.

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Is spending budget on a website the correct plan for all organizations?

October 16th, 2009 by Bruce

Practically all organizations these days either have an internet site or think that they should arrange one, but how many of these organizations are actually wasting their budget?

Some organizations that rely on localized trade from a small area, and sell products or services that are available on every main street like for example a news agents, may feel that they need a website when in reality the only trade they will ever attract is from the local community, who will not be attracted nor their numbers increased, by a website. In reality they probably would not even be aware that the website was there.

Other goods or services plainly cannot be bought from the internet either because they should be seen and felt, or discussed face to face, and so a full blow internet site for these sorts of companies would not be worth the money either.

What could be of some use to these sorts of business is rather a listing or listings on sites such as Yellow Pages providing information on local services, or simply a one page site that indicates the kinds of products on offer and directs the customer to visit the shop or office.

The organizations which do benefit from a wideranging website are the ones with a precise set of products or goods that can easily be detailed on the pages of a website and which will be required by customers on the net and consequently bought. If these organizations can get their site and it’s Search Engine Placement correct then they will hit the jackpot.

It is easy though for these businesses to waste their marketing allowance on the website alone and it seems more tragic as the opportunities are really there. The website may be very well designed and built but if website optimization has not taken place then no new customers will find it, and a large chunk of investment has gone down the drain.

If though a KW3 actually optimizes the site so that it reaches the first page of searches then all the spend will be worthwhile as new customers should come flooding in.

So the internet can be a great place to sell your goods but you must ensure that you first of all have the right product; secondly that you design and build the website in the right way; and finally that you use Online Marketing to ensure that the site can be found on page one of the top search engine rankings. Otherwise large amounts of marketing budget simply disappear down a large black hole.

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Is advertising an internet site actually worth the price?

October 16th, 2009 by Bruce

There are reasonable costs attached to Online Marketing and companies often think again about spending on the service as it comes to the end of a lengthy process which has already seen them spend a large chunk of their marketing budget.

The cost of a graphic designer for the visuals and then a web designer for the structure can often cost into the thousands of pounds depending on the intricacy of the website. Then there is added to that the cost to the company of personnel taking time to collate the site with the two experts, and then to fill it with all the information about the products or services available. At the end of this process most organizations hope that all bases have been covered, staff can finally get back to their day job and the sales or enquiries should start pouring in.

Alas. The likelihood of you having a product so rare that it has very limited internet competitors is small, the competitor websites are recognized and know to the search engines. They have usually been optimized themselves as the businesses have arrived at the same position as you at some earlier point in time and have taken on board valuable lessons. It therefore really would be a waste of time, money and effort to go to the trouble of getting this far and then simply failing to complete the task.

Your internet site will still probably be practically invisible to new customers looking on the net as it will be listed so far down the Search Engine Placement rankings that no searching customer will ever reach your page. The websites that get hold of 95% of seaching customers are the ones that appear on the first page of the search engine ranking list and these sites achieve it because they have gone on to the final part of the process of Website Optimization.

By using a SEO Company to provide Search Engine Marketing services they should make sure that your well thought out, planned and relatively pricey website is actually accessed by people other than your existing customers. Try to choose a company who will charge you only on delivery of page 1 ranking results as these are the only ones that are useful to your site. Some organizations can claim seemingly impressive improvements to your Search Engine Placement, possibly from a ranking of page 25 originally to a vastly improved page 15 ranking. This unfortunately is still practically useless, think about the last time you trawled through to page 5, especially if you located what you were looking for on page one!

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