Innovative Future Web Design

Does your businesses need a website? If your business is booming from recommendations, you can’t keep up with demand as it is and you don’t want to grow the business more or take on more staff, then you may not need a website. But for many there are any number of reasons why a website is an essential tool. That said even if you are rushed off your feet and can’t cope-perhaps you need a website even more-to save you time, take your bookings and to keep down costs.

What are the advantages of selling online? With an online store you can sell your products or services 24 hours a day using a fully automated store that accepts credit cards, customers don’t have to queue for (let alone leave home!), that doesn’t get too busy, take breaks or have health & safety or personnel issues! Unlike an office a website is never closed, or engaged, and contact details are always available whenever a customer decides they need them. Unlike a “High Street” shop-overheads, both fixed and variable, can be so much lower they’re hardly even comparable.

Use a site to aid customers researching products-informational site. A website can really come into it’s own when a customer wants to learn more before deciding to buy-the research stage of the buying process. Even for those businesses that are successfully existing on word of mouth websites can be a strong validator of those recommendations to increase business.

The cost of websites measure up favourably against traditional forms of advertising. They really come into their own compared to TV, radio, or even newspaper ads. After the initial design cost, there are hosting fees which for most small businesses will be between £5-£10 a month, and your domain name, which is likely to be between £5-10 a year. That’s it.

Of course we can’t ignore the design cost but this does not have to be prohibitive. If you’re a major company needing cutting edge technology, databases and expecting thousands of visitors every day then yes, you’ll probably spend £1000’s on having a site designed and built-but it doesn’t have to be that way for the smaller business. You can have a technically sound, “standards compliant” site built for anywhere between £200 and £1000 depending on the scope of the design brief-but that’s a one off cost-unless you decide to redesign it in years to come. The cost of updates should be minimal-especially in these days of content management systems and if you have the skills. You could even build it yourself if you have the time, motivation, desire to learn, skills and software. I could list any number of technical and philosophical reasons for not recommending this-but I won’t-I’m biased-I’m a web designer-my bills need paying to!

Back to the advantages of having a site:-

Online coupons are a great incentive for people to come back to your site but you’re also give you a way to gauge the traffic to your site. On top of this you’re saving money. You don’t have to pay a printer, postage, and there’s a huge saving in not having to repeat newspaper or magazine ads. If they want the coupon, they’ll print it on their own printer. It’s also a form of viral advertising-not to be confused with the bad kind of computer viruses-it’s a great incentive for people to forward to friends and family, creating a mass mailing, word of mouth that costs you nothing.

A great thing on the advertising side is email. It’s a huge advantage nowadays to be able to email with your name and your business name in the address! It’s more professional and it can become viral advertising. or spam-if the emails are useful and directed to those that are interested and have registered that interest it’s not spam, and it becomes viral marketing if your emails are forwarded beyond the person you sent it to.

The “Google effect”. Something well worth considering, as made by Jason Grober on www.articlecity.com, amongst others, is the Google effect. Let’s look at Google for a minute. Have you ever seen a traditional ad for Google? The only ad’s you might see are “google ads” -but these aren’t for Google per se-they’re links to products and services listed on Google. Strictly speaking they don’t sell anything, it doesn’t cost anything to use, and it doesn’t advertise. Yet, whilst currently having approx. 16 billion competitors in the form of other sites to visit, it’s the third most visited site on the Internet (probably even number 1 by the time you read this) it’s stocks and shares are worth billions and has a solid reputation well beyond that of other IT companies we could mention-all by word of mouth! That’s pretty spectacular no matter how you look at it.

Websites are amongst the top four influencers in 2005 according to DoubleClick’s annual Touchpoints study points when it comes to making the decision to purchase in 10 business categories: travel, automotive, telecommunications, banks and credit cards, mortgage and investment, movies, consumer electronics, home products, personal and home care, and prescription drugs.

Rick Bruner, DoubleClick’s research director adds: “When we ask people what most influenced their decision to purchase this product or service, Web sites outranked television ads in eight out of those 10 categories.” Indeed the study, somewhat unsurprisingly, showed that in the travel industry 46% were most influenced by travel websites compared to other influencers.

There was a record £8.2 bliion spent online in 2005 according to market analysts Verdict. This is up 28.9% on 2004 and is against the rise in overall UK sales in 2005 of just 1.5%. According to Verdict “the Internet is playing a significant role in the demise of some traditional stores”

Internet shopping among UK consumers soared almost 50% in the 10 weeks before Christmas according to e-commerce trade body IMRG.

Of course it’s all very well quoting statistics, figures and others who, like me, may have an equally vested interest in the Internet and web sites-but I do believe there’s a pretty strong, valid argument that markets, and the world, are changing and that business, especially in the High Street, is very different to how it used to be. The initial question I posed was Do you Need A Site-perhaps a more relevant question would be - Can you afford not to….?