Why Your Business Needs A Website

Lets look at a hypothetical example.

You are a landscape company, painter or maybe you build custom decks. How do your customers find you? Yellow Pages? Very expensive for a small business.

A sign on your vehicle with your business name and phone number? A business card to hand out? Flyer’s?

All good ideas and small companies use them all the time. A favorite of lawn service and tree service small businesses seems to be throwing a ziploc bag with a pebble and a flyer into the lawn of a likely customer.

As a consumer I personally tend to look for lawn care or tree care from a small business. The price is usually a little more reasonable than a service picked out from the ½ page Yellow Page ads.

However it’s a pain to try & find a pen when I see what appears to be a reliable lawn care business in the neighborhood. I even look at the flyer’s but I’m not likely to call. My experience in calling is that it may or may not get returned that day. It would be great if they had a website where I could see what they are all about, get prices, email an inquiry.

I know so many people who feel the same way. My wife usually gets names for things we need done from work. Her coworkers are always asking do you know any good lawn care, tree service, deck repair, painters, plumbers etc. Word of mouth is a fantastic way do get business & happy customers will of course spread the word.

A website will enhance this for you. Your web address can be on your vehicle, business card, local business listings and more. It’s not that expensive and the return on your investment is great.

So your a small lawn care service, maybe a one person outfit or maybe you have a two truck outfit. You want to get more business and expand.

Your tired of missing calls from potential customers and having to return them at 6pm or later since you were out on the job. Tired of getting their answering machine & trust me they are hesitant to leave a message on yours.

So you decide to get a website where your customers can get their questions answered and see all the services you offer.

You could buy a domain from godaddy and try to use their on line website builder. Time consuming, cumbersome looks like a godaddy cookie cutter site and does not stand a snowballs chance in h*#% of appearing in the search engines anywhere near the top 5 pages much less page one.

You could buy your own web design software, ftp software, get your domain hosted somewhere, maybe godaddy and try to do it yourself. Big learning curve big time commitment.

Or… you can hire a website designer. Good call.

That first web company you tried wanted $1,200 for a 10 page site with a contact form. Plus $49 a month for hosting and maintenance. Not to mention $29 for your domain name that “they” will register for you (read hold hostage).

Whatever you do get your own hosting through Host Gator (cheap 24/7 service reliable) they are a world class host. Buy your own domain or if you have someone register it for you make sure they register at godaddy where you can ger a free account and they transfer the domain to your account as soon as possible. Get that in writing.

I have heard to many sad stories of domains being held hostage. Basically the design company owned it and leased it to the customer. Same with hosting. Many clients website code is encrypted & only that design firm can make site changes. They have you over a barrel. Don’t let that happen.

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