Even in this day and age where there is a computer is just about every home in America, there are still business owners that do not understand the importance of a business website. Today you will learn the power your business website can have to aid in the growth of your business. I don’t think these business owners are purposely not creating website, they just don’t know all the ways their business website can help them. Read on to discover the secrets to leveraging the power of a business website.
Secret #1 Always Open
What is one of the hardest things about running your own business? One thing that comes to my mind is being open to service your current clients as well as being there for new clients. As a business owner there are so many hours in the day you can work. Twelve-hour days get really old after a while. This is the first benefit of your business website it never closes.
Before the Internet, business owners had to rely on old tape operated answering machines to hopefully capture someones interest when they called after hours. Now your business website can be your after hours voice. You might own a landscape company, and a person sees a show on TV that inspires them. They go online to see locally who can make their dream come true, and find your website. They see from your portfolio that you have created similar landscapes to what they envisioned. They read your mission statement and see that you have been in business for over 12 years, which adds credibility to your name, and then they visit your contact page, and ask that a representative call them for a consultation.
Secret #2 Lessen Administrative Duties
One of the worst parts about owning a business is paperwork. Lets face it, paperwork is not what sparked your interest in opening your own business in the first place, but it is part of business. Would it be great to have a tool that can automate some of the mundane daily tasks that consume precious hours during the day? A business website can automate a lot of the daily tasks to free up more time for you to do productive tasks that will grow your business.
A good example of this is in the case of Real Estate Agents. Before a new client would call and say, I am looking to move to your city, and I am looking for a house. Can you send me some information? Then the agent would have to find certain properties that fit the needs of that person. At the time, this was a completely manual process. Now leveraging the power of an interactive website, an agent can simply input the criteria set by the client and every time a new property comes on the market that fits that persons needs an email is sent to that person for them to see the property. The agent no longer has to constantly review the needs of their clients, their website does this for them.
Even simply duties can be eliminated with your business website. How many times during the day do you think the person answering the phone for your business has to answer the question, What are your hours? This can be seen on your contact page. Imagine if this happened 6 times a day and 5 people called each day that is 30 minutes wasted. That does not seem like a lot of time, but multiply that by 7 days a week, then by 4 weeks in a month lisinopril price. That is 14 hours a month. If you pay your receptionist $10/hr. that is $140 wasted a month times 12 months that is $1,680 a year. Just eliminating that part of your day to day operations can pay for your website in one year.
Secret #3 “Your Business” First Impression
Again lets look at the example of the landscape company. It is after hours and a new client visits your site. It is professionally designed, the color scheme matches the design concepts of your logo, and it is very easy to use. This tells that new client, Hey this company has their act together. Without even meeting you new clients can get a feel for your business, all while you are enjoying dinner with your family. How much do you think that is worth?
Everyone has heard you only have one chance to make a first impression. This holds true for your business website. What do you want people to think about your business. Do you want to save money upfront by creating your own site using free hosting with ads all over the page, while using a Site Builder that creates a cookie-cutter website that thousands of other people can make? As you have experienced image is everything in business. Why else would there be Image Consultants if it werent so important. Look at it this way, if your business website costs you $2,500 to have a professional design company create, and the site has a custom template, is easy to navigate, and has loads of information about your company, dont you think that is a worth while start-up cost. Take the example in the last section, if your website only eliminated the your receptionist answering the question of when are you open that is a savings of $1,680 a year. Now a well-designed site could actually pay for itself in one new client. If the landscape company got a new client from their website and that client wanted their grass removed and xeriscaping done, that might be a $16,000 contract, isnt it worth spending $2,500 to make $16,000. That sounds like a sound investment to me.
Secret #4 Farther Reach for New Business
Growing up, my Dad owned his own beauty salon and sold his own line of cosmetics and skincare. Over time his business grew, and frequently he would give beauty seminars to large organizations. He was paid for doing the presentation, but the real money came from the line of people after the seminar waiting to buy his cosmetics and skincare. Since his business was based in Las Vegas, this also started his mail order business. These folks fell in love with his products, and did not want to fly to Vegas every time they needed to renew their supply. The residual income from doing these shows was nice, but it did create more administrative work. It was also limited by those that took his seminars. The time it took to answer calls, right down the order, and write down the billing information started to get old, and tiring fast. By creating an online store for him, not only are the administrative duties lessened, he has a much farther reach for new customers.
Now that he has a fully functional eCommerce website he is not limited to the people that come to Las Vegas for his seminars. People all over the world are able to buy his products. Since all the orders are placed securely online, he no longer has to take the time to answer calls for orders when they are simply delivered to his email box. The payment has already been made, so there is no billing tasks to perform, just package the order, and send it easy money!
Secret #5 Lowers Your Advertising Costs
Lets face it, without advertising your business, you have a slim chance of staying open very long. Your advertising budget can include print media, yellow page ads, and direct mail. Imagine now if you had a business website to support all those advertising mediums.
Lets look at your yellow pages listing. Every line of information, or every color you ad to attract more attention costs you money. Wouldnt it be great if you had some sort of advertising tool that could provide a wealth of information about your company, increase interactivity with existing and new clients, and the only month fees you incur are web hosting fees and maintenance fees? If your current yellow page ad costs you $500 per month with a black line around your listing, your logo added, and your slogan in red. Now you have a professionally designed website will everything a person needs to know about your business, so you do not need such a fancy yellow page ad. Next time around you only have your logo with a red border, and it costs you $275 per month. That is a savings of $225 a month. Most hosting packages now cost about $10/mo., and say your design company charges you $50/hr, and you have about a hours worth of updates a month, so that is a cost of $60. Subtract that from your $225 savings on your ad, and you have an extra $165 per month for advertising. These are just the hard cost benefits of having a business website. A yellow page ad cant show examples of your work. It cant have interactive forms to fill out. It also cant provide information you wrote that would strengthen your visitors opinion about you as an authority in your field. How much do you think that is worth? O.K. so you are now saving $165/mo. on your yellow page ad, how else can it help lower your advertising spending?
If you do regular direct mailings to get the word out about your company, this cost can also be lessened by having a website. Lets say you send out 1,000 half-page postcards a month with new coupons on them. By incorporating a newsletter feature into your website, your costs are almost eliminated. Your only real cost is the time it takes you to create the newsletter every month. The coupons can be available for direct download on your site, so you eliminate the costs of printing and mailing them. Using your newsletter allows you to also feature new products or service announcements, which would have cost you more to do through direct mail.
Now lets talk money. If it takes you one hour a month to create the newsletter and you pay yourself $50/hour, your newsletter costs you $50/mo. The way you use to do it, first you had to have the graphic designers create your post card, probably at a rate of $50/hour with a 2-hour time. That is $100. You have to have half page postcards made to have the room for your coupons. That is a full stamp to send instead of the discounted postcard rate. If you are mailing 1000 postcards at $0.39 each that is $39. Now you have to look at the administrative costs. You have to pick up the postcards from the printers, you have to add the mailing labels and stamps, and then take them to the post office. This may take you 3 hours, at $50/hr what you pay yourself, that is another $150. O.K. so we have artwork, $100, postage $39, and your time $150, that is $289/mo. This does not include the mailing labels and the possibility of you getting more business in that 3 hours you spent doing all this stuff. Combining the savings on your yellow page ad, and the savings of direct mail you are now saving, $454/mo. Lets multiply that by 12 and we get $5,448 per year. What kind of website do you think you can get for $5,500?
Now that I have shown you all the ways a business website is essential in saving you time and money, take a look at how your business runs without one. See all the ways you can save yourself time and money as well as grabbing more business, and ask yourself, Why didn’t I do this before?
Be sure to contact us today about creating a website that will save you precious time and money.