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1. Your customers and potential customers are already searching the Web. 

More and more people are using the Internet to research and purchase products and services. If you have no web site, you have no chance to compete. 

2. A website increases your credibility. 

Your website has a powerful impact on a potential customer's confidence in you. A professional design, well-written copy, helpful product information, and good contact info can tremendously increase trust in your company. It lets people know you're knowledgeable and up-to-date.

3. Your competitors are probably already on the Web. 

Do you want to compete?

4. Your web site will promote your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

Even when you're sleeping your web site can be working for you. You might be surprised how many research for products and services at the weekend and in the evening.

5. Inexpensive way to provide information about your business. 

You can have pages and pages of information about your company and your products or services in much more detail than you'd ever be able to pay for in more traditional media. The information on these ads is usually brief and general and most often does not differentiate you from your competitor a few pages over.

6. The beauty of a web site is that your largest cost is in the original construction of your web site. 

After website has been created you only pay a fraction of paper print advertising each month for hosting and regular updating and again - the information on your web site will be far more extensive and informative to your clients than your paper ad ever will be. In the long run you are financially better off putting your brochures or ads on your web     site.

7. You can change the information on your website whenever you want.

Have you ever been in the situation that your prices, your products or services or your address has changed, and your marketing material has become outdated over night? With a web site, these problems are minimal and inexpensive. Changes are usually easily implemented.

8. A website makes it easy for people to refer new customers to you. 

For many businesses, referrals are a crucial source of new customers. Having a website makes it easy to encourage referrals, because customers can simply send friends and business contacts to your site. Website addresses are easier to remember than phone numbers. Plus, giving people multiple ways of contacting you makes it more likely that they will do so.

A website is a powerful sales tool. Selling your products through an online store is often a great way to expand your business. Your website storefront costs a fraction of a brick and mortar store and can reach many more people local, national as well as international.

A Web Site is Your Online Representative

Would you build your brick and mortar shop and do all of the signs and interior decorating yourself? Most of us would not; we would hire professionals to give us the best image possible.

Your web site acts as your business card and/or online shop. It acts as a direct representative of you and your business. If your web site doesn’t have the professional image you need, you are losing customers. If first impressions are so important, why would you want to turn your potential customers away the first second they visit your site?

Professionalism

When you hire a professional designer, not only do they know how to give you a beautiful image, but also how to give you the image that’s right for your business and industry. A skilled designer should know the "ins" and "outs" of marketing as well as creativity.

An effective web site should be unique, be pleasant to the eye, have clear and easy navigation, load efficiently, and work properly in all the major browsers.

Saving Time

Hiring a professional web designer instead of making the web site yourself will save you a lot of time, energy, and frustration. There is a large learning curve in order to make effective web sites and there are many aspects to web development much beyond learning HTML which makes it a full time job.

A professional web developer is skilled and up-to-date in several areas including Marketing, Communications, HTML, CSS, Image Processing, Search Engine Optimization, Java, Web Servers, Database, PHP, JSP and other technologies that take place in the development.

Getting Ahead of the Competition

As you may well know, competition is as fierce on the internet as it is in the real world. If your competitors have a web presence before you do, they are already winning. However, if you launch a new web site that is more effective than theirs, you will gain an edge.

Not only does a well-built web site give a good first impression, it also will give your customers a reason to trust your business over that of your competitors.

Uniqueness and Customization

According to Netcraft (an internet services company which provides webserver and webhosting market-share analysis), it is estimated that the Internet had a total 108,810,358 new websites in 2007 - 2.7 times more compared to 40 million in March 2003.

How are you going to make yours stand out? Buying a nice template can be a quick and a cheap solution, but you may risk having your web site look like several others. Furthermore, many features that you may require for your web site including contact forms, galleries, forums, and other special scripts are simply not available with pre-made templates. If you have a web site built with a pre-made template and in the future you want to expand it, you may have to rebuild the whole site again to include the added features that you need.

Communicating Your Message

A professional web designer is experienced in knowing how to properly communicate your message. They are skilled at marketing and are concerned, above all, with how to effectively communicate your message by organizing your information in a digestible manner through the use of colors, fonts, shapes, layouts, and more to convey the message you want to represent your business.

Attention

A nice web site designed by a professional designer will bring attention to your business. Not only does a nice web site attract new customers, it will also bring professional attention from your peers or potential advertisers that you may be in search of. Don’t forget that word-of-mouth and good referrals are some of the most powerful marketing tools out there.

Search Engine Optimization

One of the most important factors about a web site is its presence in the search engines. It is useless to have the nicest web site in the world if it doesn’t have a good presence in the search engine listings. Good search engine ranking are important because they are usually the number one way potential customers will find you on the internet. They also act as a free and effective advertising tool.

A professional web designer will know how to develop your web site to make it rank high in search engine listings by building it search engine-friendly from the bottom up. This is the most effective and legal way to insure top rankings for your web site.

Making the Difference between Personal and Commercial Web Sites

While we don’t want to discourage anyone who wants to learn how to build a web site, we do recommend that you save it for personal use. There is a huge difference between a home page and a professional web site. It can take years of experience to learn how to build an effective commercial web site and it is something that is best left to an expert.

Having a professional web site will provide you with a sense security in your business that no home-made web site can do. Your web site will be something that thousands of people around the world may view every day. Make sure your web site shows what you want the world to see; a high-quality, clean, accessible, professional, and top ranking business.

So what is an Effective website anyway?

It’s a website, which helps you to get results. Different businesses expect different results, as well as different type of website can fulfill the different expectations.

For example:

• Brochure type of a website is meant to give out the information to the visitors about the company, as well as to increase the credibility of the company.
• The interactive one is supposed to bring more referrals and give the owner the ability to interact with their clients.
• The E-Commerce - the owner is expecting sales.

What is the key to reach the goal?

The goal of every business is to make money and save money. When you open a "brick and mortar" store what is the main key to the store success? Everybody know - "Location, location, location...!" The main goal is for people (your potential customers) to find you. For a website it will be "Traffic, traffic, traffic...!"

An effective website attracts people and brings traffic. Its mission - to bring you more visitors and viewers, who will turn into your customers.

The first step to an effective website is:

• professional design which reflects a look and feel of your business (unique customized design);
• easy navigation (usability), interesting,
• fresh content (Content is King!) The content of your Web site is what will keep your readers interested in.