I was looking for material to write an article on why you need a web site if you are a brick-and-mortar business and if you are not a big business.
I came across this great article
Instead of writing something new on the matter I just decided to give you a link to it.
Read it and when you come back ask us for a quote.
We’ll make the best web site possible for YOU. And it will be more affordable than you think.
Online business and/or online presence can look intimidating for small and medium enterprises.
When businesses start thinking about online presence they usually have many questions and not many answers.
Most of the businesses can not afford to have their own IT department and going out there and looking for answers can be overwhelming. There are masses of information online and getting the right information can be pretty challenging.
How do you actually go about having an online presence or developing online tools for getting more customers for your brick-and-mortar business?
The easiest answer is outsourcing. Just like clothing business outsources manufacturing to another company (most probably in another country) you can, no, should, outsource to another company or person (they are called freelancers). These companies and/or people are experts in their field just like you are in yours. They will give you the necessary help and guide you in the right direction. With their help your idea/project will be successfully implemented.
There are a number of things you should consider when selecting a company to outsource your online project(s).
1. Technology to be used.
There are many different technologies that a web development company can use. Use of all these technologies depends on the project that you want to implement. Be aware that there are many technologies that are “open source”. Open source means (in most cases) that they can be used for FREE. It also means that you can save thousands on development fees. Basically instead of developing from scratch one of these applications can be used and modified and/or extended to meet your particular needs.
Some of the examples of these technologies are Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal.
You can google open source projects and it will give you millions of pages of project sites and blog articles.
If you don’t want to bother with it and rather talk to an expert in the field you can call us and we will give you a FREE consultation.
2. Hosting of your project
“Hosting” means where your code (project) will be kept and maintained. It is important to talk about these things with the web development company/freelancer that will develop your project. A lot of these companies will offer web hosting services as part of the web development package, while others will help set up a web hosting account with a web hosting company (there is a big number of those too and you can read many articles on this topic online).
Remember that web hosting is a recurring expense for a business and will cost you money every year as opposed to web development which is a one time expense (not to be mistaken with code/web site maintenance).
3. Maintenance
This is another one of those recurring expenses to your business that is going to happen whether you want it or not. No matter how well the project is done there are going to be things that will need changing.
Don’t forget to ask a web development company about their maintenance services. Usually if a company offers a development and hosting package it will also include a maintenance service with it. It will cost you more if you hire a company to just do maintenance of your web site.
4. SEO & Marketing
Another vital part of web development is marketing and SEO. Right, what on earth does SEO mean? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is basically a range of measures to get your site to appear as high in the search engine indexes as possible. Let’s say you have a dry-cleaning business in Montreal that picks-up and delivers. Let’s say someone is looking for such a business… in Montreal. If he goes on google and searches for such a business, you would want your business to appear on the first page and the first line (preferably). Well, implementing all these SEO measures will accomplish this (if done right of course).
Usually web developers include it as a part of the web site development package, but it is a very important part to look for. There is no use for a web site that no one visits.
Ok, is it more or less clear now? No? Have even more questions than you had before? I thought so.
Then pick up a phone and call us at 1 888 345 4592 or send us a message.
We’ll be happy to answer your questions.