Why
Do You Need a Website?
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What are the benefits of
a website? |
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Money
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Media
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Marketability
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Masses
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| Simple.
You're in business to make money — and to make it, you can't
waste it. A website is the world's most effective use of money
to purchase media in order to market to the masses.
The Internet functions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no
labor costs to you and has the most inexpensive and widespread marketing
capabilities ever seen — period! Through this highly affordable
media, your website offers your services to the world. Statistics
show that the Internet is an excellent way to market your business
and sell your products and services. More and more customers are
logging on, making purchases, buying services and researching choices
and information through the Internet. Why should you limit your
business to your immediate locale when the whole world is a keystroke
away? You also gain major credibility by having an Internet presence;
effectively you can look like one of the big companies — all
without wasting your money. |
| What
do you need for a website? |
| • A
Computer: Although highly recommended, it is not necessary for
you to have a computer but it is essential for those wishing to
view your site. |
| • ISP:
an Internet Service Provider is how you connect to the Internet.
This ISP will provide you with an email address to communicate by
electronic mail (email). |
| • Domain
Name: This is www.yourname.com; your address or home page on
the Internet. |
| •
Hosting:
An Internet presence provider. This is where your website is stored
for the world to view. |
| •
Website Design: You'll need all the codes, computer language,
scripts and graphics which, when put together, formulate your website
into a viewable form for the world to see. |
| • FTP:
File Transfer Protocol to transfer information to and from your
website for updates, repair, edits and changes. This is how web
designers communicate with your domain at the host. |
| • Maintenance:
Updates, additions, changes, and most importantly, search engine
analysis and submission of the pages that make up your website. |
| What
is "E-commerce"? |
| E-commerce
simply means Electronic Commerce. It is the buzzword for the new
millennium, and for very good reason. The Internet is changing the
way business is done with literally billions of dollars being made
over the Internet. E-commerce gives you the ability to accept payment
over the Internet by either credit card or electronic checks. Through
E-commerce, you can sell products or services instantly to anyone
in the world without having to constantly monitor your website. |
| How
does CDG design my site? |
| • First,
we determine the exact goals of the client's website. If,
for instance, you are selling a tangible product then the goal would
be a site that has your product listings, pictures, descriptions,
prices and shipping information in an online catalog. The end goal
being a website enabling the consumer to easily view, gather information
about and then purchase these products online (E-commerce). In addition
to these basic goals, there is the more far reaching and highly
important goal of determining how this site will fit in with your
marketing strategy. All these facts are formulated in a design layout
that describes the fundamental business strategy behind your website.
In essence, we want to ensure that we, as the website design team,
fully understand what is required to satisfy our client's ultimate
Internet and marketing goals. |
| • Secondly,
our design team works with the client to create a basic visual
layout of how the site will appear on the screen. This can be
as simple as being drawn out by the client on a plain piece of paper,
using a word processor or even by showing us another website that
looks like what you want your site to look like. In this step, we
might make suggestions about adding any additional functions that
are absolutely necessary or simply might be useful. This step is
our outline for the actual website. |
| • The
third step is to map the flow of the site from the consumers'
point of view in order to ensure that potential customers can easily
navigate from the entry point through to the main content pages
(and all other pages within the site). This is done by providing
intuitive and thorough navigational tools. |
| • In
the last step, we combine all the above information (marketing strategies,
E-commerce, and visual layout) and come up with the final and
complete website design plan. Our design team registers the
client's domain name, activates the client's host account, codes
the pages and implements any other elements necessary to make the
client's website functional. We test all components of the site
and then submit the site in beta (or test) format for the client
to view and approve. If any additions or adaptations are necessary,
they are made at this point. The site is then re-tested and re-submitted
for the client's final approval. Next, the site is uploaded to our
server with a final test of all the site's functions. Finally, when
we are sure the test site is in perfect order and the client is
satisfied, the website is submitted to search engines and/or directories
and the client is instructed to implement any additional marketing
strategies. Violá! Your website is ready for the world to
see!
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| What
costs will be involved with establishing a website? |
| 1.
Website development, design and start-up costs: This refers
to paying a website design firm to create the site and place the site
in search engine registrations worldwide. Costs also include buying
a domain name and a small fee for your host server configuration.
Included in this fee, at no cost, is advice or help in marketing your
website. Your website's final costs vary and are proportional to site
size and capabilities. We recommend having a fixed cost quote in hand
before building your website. Contact CDG for a free price quote.
|
| 2.
Domain Hosting: Very affordable monthly fee. |
| 3.
Periodic editing, update and edits/additions: Proportional
to amount of monthly work required. |
| What
are a website's advantages? |
- Development
and distribution costs are extremely low. When you compare
the cost of establishing a website to what it costs to promote
your business in print or on the air, you'll see that a website
is the cheapest form of marketing ever created. A radio campaign
featuring several 30-second spots per week for three months could
run you $5,000 - $10,000. That gets you five minutes per week
of exposure for three months in the local area only. Newspaper
and magazine ads are similarly highly priced, and only last for
the life span of that particular publication. A website has virtually
limitless space. You could put up a website with dozens of photographs
and several thousand words for under $3,000 for the first year,
and keep it up and running for a few hundred dollars per year
after that. What would it cost to run a newspaper ad of this size
for a year? Imagine how much it would cost to produce a catalog
for 200 different products and keep it in consumers' hands for
an entire year. You can accomplish this with a website very easily
with low development cost and almost no distribution cost. Websites
are in full color - a palette of 16.7 million colors for your
photographs alone.
- A
website is globally accessible; that means your website
can be viewed by anyone, anywhere, as long as they have Internet
access. There are no physical limitations to broadcast areas,
as in radio nor circulation region restrictions, as in newspapers
or magazines.
- You
can keep your website more current more affordably than
any other media. You can update a website immediately and as often
as you like. Imagine you sell products whose prices fluctuate.
With a website, you can change these prices every time they go
up or down, so your marketing materials are always accurate.
- The
little guys can compete with the big guys since a website
is economical and not limited by size. This means a small business
can present as large or creative an image on the Internet as a
bigger company — with the right design team.
- A
website also allows easy, safe communication between you
and the consumer so that anyone who visits your site can contact
you at any time by sending an email. Unlike communications that
originate from other forms of advertising, consumers who send
emails don't have to deal with many problems of everyday business:
pushy salesmen, remembering to call during business hours, having
to battle crowds to get to your stores, spending time waiting
on voice mail or getting the wrong information. It's convenient,
easy, and safe for the consumer. Email is also convenient for
you. You can respond to all your customer inquiries at the same
time, and do it when you have a free moment — not in the
middle of rush hour when someone calls up to ask for product information
or directions to your location.
- You
can save money on tech support and answering questions. If
your employees spend a lot of time answering the same questions
and sending out the same material, you can reduce that labor cost
significantly by providing the information on the website. For
instance, a client can avoid having to mail or fax information
for over 1,000 phone call solicitations in a one-year period simply
by providing the information on their site. That improves on labor
costs and provides a real cost savings in reduced long distance
phone bills (for faxes) and postage. Your website can also take
orders while you sleep as people can place orders on a website
at any time, day or night.
- But
most importantly, no salesmen manning the store, no utilities,
no insurance, no payroll ... computers don't need a benefit package
or overtime. For every second of every day, your website is working
for you!
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| As
to your choice for website design, if a designer can't tell you why
a website is a unique marketing tool as we have here, how successful
will their website be? Are they helping you to develop a marketing
mechanism or are they selling special effects? Is it an intelligent
tool for driving business or an overpriced, turbo-charged business
card? Make sure you choose a designer with marketing expertise, experience
and skills - Creative Design Group! |
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