I want a website! By Rule One

Whether you are just starting out in your business or your business is already established, it is a common knowledge that you must have a business website. It is a defacto knowledge like when you have a business, you must register your business, have a business bank account, business address and business contact. Having a Facebook Page, Twitter account for your clients to follow you helps but there are still a big percentage of your customer who may not on those channels. The most cost effective and accessible for your customer to learn about your business, products and services is from your website.

Is a website just a website or is there more to it? The answer depends on your marketing strategy. Having a business website IS part of your marketing strategy. There will be cost to maintain it, be it your time or you hire a Web Master to maintain it for you. Then there is the cost of Web Hosting, Domain Name registration and renewals. The examples below subscribes to small business owners who are managing their own websites.

When new clients approach me for quotations, I usually qualify their requirements into the following requirements.

Below are the different types of websites that are suitable for the different types of businesses.

Brochure or Portfolio Website

The easiest way to start your website is to have Brochure Website. As it says, it is basically translating your existing brochure about your business onto your website. The content of this website includes maximum of 5 pages. Home, About Us, Services, Products, Contact Us done! That is all you need. You can elaborate further in the subpages of About Us to be more in-depth, to include, company, history, board of directors and so on.
There is not much maintenance to this website, perhaps on annual basis. Most Brochure or Portfolio websites are flashier and over the top, since it represents the image of the business.

Informative Website

Information driven websites are websites that are content rich and has a high frequency of changes. Perhaps almost every day! For example, if you are a personal financial consulting firm, Educate-and-Entice strategy is a way for you to build confidence to your website visitors of what you can do for them. Your website homepage will have the different content, tools, tips on how a person can manage their personal finance.
The most cost effective way to build this website is to build it on a Content Management platform like, Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal. You can update your own content without having to employ a web master.

Sales-Driven Website

Your website is your business. That is what a sales-driven website is about. You are selling your products from your website. Examples of some of this websites are e-commerce websites, selling ebooks or selling just ONE product. This websites are very focus. There are probably less than 3 pages. The ‘Landing’ page, Order Form page and Payment page. You must include an online payment gateway like PayPal, WorldPay or other secured payment options. If your sales closing process are tedious, you probably lose your customer.

Community Based Website

A Forum page or websites are community based websites. If you expect your website visitors to be more active to post articles and discussions about specific topics, then this is the website you need. Examples of such websites are social networking types of websites where visitors of similar interest would contribute and participate in the discussions and activities.

A lot of time, the website you envision for your business comprise of a bit of all of the above. Is it possible? Yes it is. But before you hire an agency to do all that, look at your business development phrase. Do you need to implement all of that at the start of your business? Probably not. And you do not need to follow what your competitor is doing. So, look at your business and marketing strategy and see what kind of website you need.

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