Taking Your Business Online

Many people who approach a web design company think, if they take their business online, sales will kick in. The illusion that the web site is launched and they then just can lean back and make money prevails, but this is not how it works in reality ...

Taking your business online.

Many people who approach a web design company think, if they take their business online, sales will kick in. The illusion that the web site is launched and they then just can lean back and make money  prevails, but this is not how it works in reality.

Most web design companies do not raise the attention of the client to the fact that a web sites needs to be managed to be able to stand up and stand out from 1 million or more competitors, when launched. An online marketing strategy and a roadmap of how to achieve best ranking in search engines to generate sales leads and how to succeed in creating targeted traffic needs to be established.

Those web design companies do either not see it as their responsibility to tell the client the facts, or they are reluctant to scatter the dreams of a prosperous effortless business online and the risk that the client pulls back disillusioned is then very high. Therefore design and development are completed and the bill is send to the client - case closed.

Good companies  work differently!

Receiving a request the company should start a search for the competition and analyze the current internet market situation and what a new web site would need on financial resources for promotional means to actually be able to generate profit and what on investment is required to beat the competition. The result should be communicated to clients before they commit themselves and sign a contract for a web site order.
A good web design company does not only deliver:

• a professional web design that complies with the brand's web style guide;
• a solution, how the web site can be differentiated from those of the competitors;
• visually strong brand elements;
• a unique concept;
• genuine and informative content, if the text is not delivered by the client;
• web design with a clean and browser compatible code (IE6, IE7 and Firefox on Windows operating system) following W3 standards;
• a web site that is built, applying search engine optimization guidelines, from start saves marketing costs which are between 1000 and 6 thousands of $ USD per month, depending on the budget the owner has available; There are however web sites that have a far larger budget then the above mentionend. Just consider what an advertisement in Messenger's Chat window cost - then you might realize what actually is going on on the internet.

but taking web design as such, on a dfifferent and meaningful level and in the above mentionend way, is very rewarding. The process of web development is more time consuming but it is logical to pay more in the beginning and save in the end and not have a web site that stays stuck on page 100 of Google and Yahoo search results pages. This would be definitely a loss financially speaking and a waste of your time. Also for internet productions the saying: You get what you pay for, proves to be simply true.

To maintain a successful web presence a lot of knowledge is required about the technical aspect of the internet, the possibilities and restrictions, the structure and set up of a web site, programming , professional online marketing, copy writing, web analytics and user tracking and last but not least how the search engines work. To manage a web site online properly, no layman is able too because the effect would be , that the web site is set more and more back, due to the fact that the competition is continuously investing in their web sites and because time is money. 

Clients not knowing those facts, that the internet is one huge market place of billions of web sites competing with each other, assume that if somebody types in the domain name the site would turn up - this is correct, but question is, who knows the exact domain name and isn't the web site built to reach the persons who do not know the company yet and add those to your steady clients list? Fact is that a web site easily disappears in the black hole of the internet, if no web site management takes place.

Having a web site not generating sales leads, not having an acceptable amount of targeted traffic, is a web site of no value at all for its owner and an item that only generates costs. It is money wasted for a communication tool that simply does not function, so whatever you paid for the site  - each cent was too much.

This article was contributed by http://www.visualorange.com the »internet branding and online marketing company.