Your Business Online

By Jamie | April 30, 2007

Colin Calder of the Scotsman has recently wrote an interesting article on online branding….

Recent research has suggested that businesses with a poor website actually alienated customers more than those with no online presence at all. The survey - carried out by research firm Tickbox.net - found that 85 per cent of customers have reservations about buying a product or service from a company with a poor quality website compared with 53 per cent who would look elsewhere if a business had no website at all.
But, while having a website is seen as a must by customers, many small and medium-sized firms are uncertain about the amount of effort required to develop an effective website.
Two-thirds (67 per cent) of SMEs believed it would take ten times as long as it actually does to develop a basic online presence, while 63 per cent over-estimated the cost of doing so by a massive 400 per cent.
A spokesman for the research company says: “Customers nowadays expect every business to have a professional web presence and are turned off by second-rate sites, yet many SMEs are confused over the importance of the issue.
“If businesses want to maximise sales, they must be online with a presence that gives the right impression. It is worrying that so many businesses are misinformed about the minimal cost and time needed to build a simple website.”
http://business.scotsman.com/technology.cfm?id=640482007

Terinea’s spin on getting your business online for minimal costs are…

If you’ve just started a business or don’t have an online presence, get yourself a free Blog account from Wordpress and use Microsoft Word to publish content live to the site, very very easy to do.
http://wordpress.com/

setting up Microsoft Windows Live Writer

Further down the line you can get a professional web designer to make it look all fancy and professional, content is the key here.

More on social media and how your company can embrace it….

effective-media-representation-traditional-and-modern-media/

is-your-business-on-google-map

Jamie