Web Presence – Get it, and get it right.

Over the years since I've embraced technology and the internet, I become annoyed, amazed, and awestruck when businesses don't accommodate my zeal (as a consumer).  From the small business that still doesn't accept debit/credit cards, to the small business that doesn't have a website (or has a really crappy one), I wonder what they're thinking?  These are REQUISITES nowadays!  Unless your sole target market segment is 96 year olds, I'm not the only one surprised you have paid so little attention to marketing your business.

I recently spoke with a potential client about her desire to blog about her business.  before our conversation, we had been emailing.  I checked out her website.  It wasn't good.  It looked unprofessional and low-rent... Home-made; in a bad way.  Like it was designed in MS FrontPage in 1998, and never updated since.  Tables and borders were undersized so that borders overlapped text, and info about a sales promotion/contest showed an ending deadline that was months past.

When I talked with her on the phone, I mentioned that I could both revamp her website and set up a blog that she could either learn how to manage, or pay me to manage and market.  She said that her website didn't need any work, and sounded almost offended.  I'm assuming she created the website.

This is for business owners:

I know most of you are successful to some degree.  You've ran a profitable business for some time now, perhaps long before the advent of broadband internet service.  Perhaps you owe very little of your past success to a "web presence".  Perhaps you don't care much for the internet, or you find every business in the Yellow Pages, or you assume that your type of business is excluded from any need of internet marketing...  I have no idea why you may have no (or poor) web presence.  But if this describes you, it needs to stop.  For future success' sake.

If you've been successful for a long time (decades), then you must be smart enough to realize that the world turns and things change.  What worked in the past may not work in the future.  Don't stop innovating.  The public and your customers expect to find you in cyberspace.  More and more consumers take web presence for granted.  If you don't have a decent web presence, you look bad to a growing number of consumers (or worse: you're invisible).

This doesn't mean you have to hire an IT department, a marketing firm, and a design house.  A thousand bucks will probably get you a wonderful 3 or 5 page website that tells the public "About" your business, where you're located, your history, your mission, what you can and can't do, and (importantly) provides a positive first impression.

Oh, and it's nice if potential customers can actually FIND you.  Your pretty website is just "there" if you're not putting the address on your business card, programming it into your receipt tapes, printing it on the big magnet on the door of your work vehicle, etc... and having someone do all the right Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your site.  The SEO stuff should be done by the same person or firm that designs and builds your site, in my opinion.

Supporting Links:

• 20 reasons why an organization needs an effective web presence
• Important Ways to Increase Your Web Presence