Small Business Q & A: Website Design ConsiderationsWritten by Tim Knox
Q: Should I build and maintain my business Web site myself or pay someone else to do work for me? -- Wesley L.A: When you say, pay someone else to do work for you, Wesley, I am going to assume that you are talking about hiring a professional Web site designer to do work and not your next-door neighbor's teenage son. If my assumption is correct, then read on. If not, go ahead and surf on over to Dilbert.com. You will get no good out of advice I'm about to give, so you might as well consult Dilbert for your hot business tips. Should you build and maintain your business Web site yourself or pay someone to do it for you? Let me answer your question with a couple of my own. Number one: is building and maintaining Web sites key focus of your business? Number two: could your time be better spent doing more important things like, oh I don't know, say running your business? If your answers were no and yes, respectively, then you have no business building and maintain a Web site. Remember this: every minute you spend on tasks that are not related to key focus of your business is time spent to detriment of your business. In other words, every minute you spend focusing on tasks that do not contribute to growth of your business and thereby increase your bottom line is time wasted. If you want to be a web designer, be a web designer. However, if key focus of your business is building widgets, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that your time would be better spent building widgets, not Web sites. Case in point: I once had a very wealthy dentist ask if I could teach him how to maintain his Web site so he wouldn't have to pay me to do it. Now my teeth had helped put this guy's kids through college, but that didn't seem to matter. At that moment he was more concerned about having to pay for changes to his Web site than my personal oral hygiene. Sure, I said, I'll be glad to teach you how to update your Web site, just as soon as you teach me how to clean my own teeth so I don't have to pay you to do it. He got point. And he charged me enough for cleaning to keep his site updated for months. Smart man. Many business owners think they can't afford a professionally designed Web site and that simply is not true. While old adage, "you get what you pay for" is never more true than when applied to Web site design, having a professional web designer do work for you is money well spent. A well-designed Web site can bring you a many-fold return on your investment. You can't say that about too many other collaterals. While it is best to leave Web site design and maintenance to experts, it is up to you (or someone considered a subject matter expert within our company) to provide designer with content (text and photographs) that best conveys your company's message to your customers. A Web site, no matter how well designed, is meaningless if it lacks content required to interest customers in products you sell or services you provide.
| | Small Business Q & A: What Does Your Website Say About Your Business?Written by Tim Knox
Q: My business is very small, just me and two employees, and our product really can't be sold online. Do I really need a website? -- Robin C.A: Congratulations, Robin, you are one millionth person to ask me that question. Smile for cameras, brush streamers and confetti from your hair and listen closely, because I'm about to answer for millionth time what has become one of most important and often-asked questions of digital business age. Before I answer, however, let's flash back to very first time I was asked this question. It was circa 1998, during toddler years of Internet, just after Al Gore laid claim to having given birth to concept a few short years before. I was giving a speech on impact of Internet on small business at an association luncheon in Montgomery, Alabama. My motto then was: Feed me and I will speak. I have same motto today, but I now expect dessert to be included in exchange for sharing of my vast wisdom. In 1998, which was decades ago in Internet years, future of electronic commerce or "ecommerce" as it's come to be known, was anybody's guess, but even most negative futurists agreed that all signs indicated that a large portion of future business revenues would be derived from online transactions, or from offline transactions that were result of online marketing efforts. So, Robin, should your business have a website, even if your business is small and sells products or services that you don't think can be sold online? My answer in 1998 is same as my answer today: Yes, if you have a business, you should have a website. Period. No question. Without a doubt. Thank you, drive through. Now serving customer number one million and one… Also, don't be so quick to dismiss your product as one that can't be sold online. Nowadays there is very little that can not be sold over Internet. More than 20 million shoppers are now online, purchasing everything from books to computers to cars to real estate to jet airplanes to natural gas to you name it. If you can imagine it, someone will figure out how to sell it online. Internet marketing research firms predict that online revenues will range between $180 and $200 billion dollars in 2003. They also predict that number of online consumers will grow at a rate of 30-50% over next few years. These numbers alone should be enough to convince you that your business should have a website.
|
