Is there a cost associated with getting your website to do what you want? You betcha. But the cost of not having a website available to new and existing customers is much higher. People expect your company to be accessible and online 24 hours a day. They also expect to find what they are looking for and then a method for taking some form of action (i.e. purchasing your products/services online). However, as important as it is for your company to be doing business online, sometimes it is not economically feasible to go from 0 to 60 in the first version of your website. So, let's take a look at how your website should evolve as your business grows.
Brochure Website
Your first step in creating your online presence is to create an online version of your company brochure. Using a website as a brochure allows you to provide pertinent information to your viewers at an economical cost to your business. A brochure website should contain basic information about your company including how to reach you via the phone or email (Note: use a contact form for email and not an email address to keep from being Spammed), what types of services you provide, some reasons for why your customers should pick you rather than your competition, and possibly any specials or promotions that you may be offering. It is typically made up of text and images, but with a design that appeals to the eye and is functional for navigating your site.
Depending on your needs, you may be able to find a website hosting company that is free. Some free sites that you may want to look into are: Wix and Network Solutions. These two sites allow you to build and host a free website. However, building a website that is free may make it hard for your customers to find you unless they are being directed to your site via some form of company literature like your business card or maybe a work order/invoice. This is because you are not given an Internet domain name that fully reflects your business (i.e. http://www.yourbusinessname.com/). The free sites tack your business name to the beginning of theirs (i.e. with Network Solutions - yourbusinessname.networksolutions.com) which makes it difficult to get to your website if someone hears your name and just wants to pull it up quickly.
My Recommendation: The best path is to fork out a little money on a monthly basis for a site that uses your own domain name. Making it easy for your customers should be the first priority when designing and publishing your brochure website.
E-Commerce Website
The next step for your website is to allow your customers to purchase your products and/or services online where applicable. This will usually include some form of shopping cart application that is integrated into your existing site. You have two options when creating your shopping cart. Your first option is to find a web hosting company that you can link your website to that will handle all of your inventory and transactions. You simply add your inventory along with your pricing to a template based inventory application and then add a link to your existing website that will handle all transaction based customer traffic. Some sites allow you to customize the shopping experience for your customers by allowing you to add your logo to the top of the page. The hosted shopping cart option is usually the most affordable and includes a set monthly fee depending on the package you select. One website that provides this type of service is PayPal. Just add your information, link your website and you are good to go.
The other option for selling goods and services online is to hire a web developer to build a shopping experience that caters specifically to your business. A good developer, if they don't already have a template, will build an inventory system and shopping cart that works the way your business does. They will also build it into your existing website so that your customers are not redirected towards another website for transaction purposes. The pros to this type of solution is that you get to customize every aspect of the shopping cart to suit your business's needs, have it blend into your existing website, and is usually a one time fee as opposed to a monthly fee. The cons are that this solution can become costly in a hurry with adds/changes as the project moves along and will require you to hire a developer anytime you want to add or change any aspects of the online application unless you signup for some form of ongoing service contract.
My Recommendation: Go the Paypal (or similar) route here. Unless you need your customer experience to be completely seamless or a customized shopping cart/inventory system, the outsourced path is more affordable and doesn't eat up your time coordinating with a web developer.
Full Service Website
As your business grows, you will want to give your customers an immersive online experience and provide them with a full service website. A full service website will build on the above shopping cart application by allowing your customer to come back to your site to schedule service calls, track any/all of their customer information, renew any service agreements they may have with you, and do just about anything else that you can think of to provide your customers with a self service alternative. Because the experience you need for your customers is specific to the way your company does business, this type of online capability is usually a custom built application that integrates fully into your website. For a full service website to be justified, you will typically need to find functions or processes that are performed within your business by your employees that can be handled online. Freeing up your employees time to do more important tasks helps to insure that your customized online application is providing your business with a return on investment. This is important as developing a custom application will be fairly expensive, both in time and money.
Possible Alternatives To A Full Service Website
Depending on your business model, there may be some alternatives to creating a full service website. There are many companies out on the web today that offer several service oriented solutions that would typically be built into a full service website. Functions such as contract management, service call scheduling, and customer management to name a few, can be purchased on a monthly basis from any number of online Software As A Service (SAAS) companies. Typically, you will pay on a per employee or transaction basis based upon the number of employees that you will need to have access or the number of transactions that will process through the online service. In my experience, this pricing model can become very expensive, especially for small businesses. It can also become very hard to predict your monthly expenses if your company suffers a lot of personnel turn over. However, the flexibility that SAAS companies provide your company may help you to justify some or all of the costs associated with using their services. Be aware that you may need to purchase services from several different SAAS companies depending upon your needs and how much accessibility you expect to deliver to your customers. Unfortunately, there is little to no integration between each offered online service that you may sign up for potentially making tracking of a customer, order, part, or service call very difficult and possibly very time consuming. Some sites that provide different SAAS services are SalesForce.com, Service Max, and TOA.
My Recommendation: If you choose to go down the SAAS path, try to find one service that meets the majority of your business needs and that will allow you to negotiate a fixed monthly cost. If you find that you need more than one service to give your customers a truly full service experience, look for online services that integrate easily into other online services. SalesForce.com is a good example of an online service that provides quick integration between different services as they work with many partners to insure that integration is seamless.
As you can see, your company website is very important to the survival of your business and will become increasingly more important as your business grows. If you have not thought far enough ahead in your website endeavors, you may be setting up your company to lose a lot of potential business. Make no mistake, every one of your customers will be looking to your website, not only for basic information, but to handle all of their needs online. These days, everyone is looking to get action NOW and not when someone can answer/return a phone call or get around to it. A good website will make this happen and help you to capture new potential business and retain existing customers. So if you have not planned a path to some form of full service website, my advice is to start doing it now. Technology and the web moves fast. Don't let your company fall behind no matter how big or how small it may be.
Do you feel that your website meets the needs of your customers? Have you put together a long term plan of how your website will evolve as your business grows? Let us know below.
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