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(Article first published in May '08. It has been modified slightly to suit its publication on our site)
In this frenzied on-line world it has become a mortal sin for a business not to have a website. In fact it's worse than that; business owners receive funny looks from potential customers when they have to say the dreaded words "I don't have a website". I call this affliction 'webprosy' because it's a technological form of leprosy. Some businesses suffer from the affliction more than others and potential customers stay away and choose other businesses that do have a website.
A website has also become a sign of stability in a business. Although the costs of setting up a website have come down over the years, it is still seen as a serious investment and so any business with a website "must be doing well".
As you might imagine, I would be a strong advocate of every business having a web presence. The above point about being taken seriously is an important one, but the reason is more fundamental than that. It's all about ensuring that you have some form of presence at every customer 'touch point'. In other words you need to think about all the ways that a potential customer might try to find you and with more and more people turning to the web as a searchable resource, if they can't find you on-line, you risk them finding one of your competitors!
But with all that said, it doesn't mean that every business owner needs to be investing thousands in a website. There are businesses that should absolutely invest in a multi-page site and typically those businesses are involved in business to business transactions or some form of ecommerce. Others simply need a single page to fulfil the need for basic on-line presence and businesses that would benefit from this would be retail outlets and consumer services, such as local gift shops or convenience stores.
There are some that straddle that line. I have seen many hair & beauty salons and also restaurants creating wonderful websites with on-line price lists/menus etc, but whether the site truly helped generate more business (over and above a well designed, crisp web page) is debatable.
The difference in costs can also be quite eye-opening. A web page should cost you in the region of €500 including 1 year of domain name registration and hosting, while a site will cost anything from €1,500 to €3,000, dependent on how much of the work you want to off-load to the web company. For instance if you provide all content and imagery then the cost will be lower, whereas if they write all the text and source imagery then the cost will obviously be higher.
So does your business suffer from Webprosy? If it does there is a cure and it could cost you as little as €500 to treat - if only all ailments were that easy to fix!
Franco De Bonis has worked in the field of sales and marketing promotion since 1990 and was most recently the global marketing manager for a major international technology company before setting up DG Group in January 2007.
DG Group is dedicated to delivering all the marketing solutions any company may require. Whether it's a website or leaflets and brochures, or even some product packaging; DG Group will manage the whole project and even provide guidance along the way.
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