Question on websites and internet for your buisness?

I have a meeting comming up on this. My thoughts are for a small company or person the web is way over promoted. It may work for large companies like walmart- cabelas etc. Why I say this is many people has done this and not gotten one sale or response. One member of the group says the design and set up is very critical. opinions.

If you look good you are good. If you are going to do a site, take the time to do it right, easy to navigate/understand, and keep it updated. If you do that, you'll impress folks into buying from you. Sure it depends on what you are selling also but, even if I see something in a magazine, I go online to check it out and see if I can find it cheaper, better, or closer to me.

Dave

A presence on the web is essential for any business today. Even if it's just a small site that doesn't do anything but explain who you are, what you do, where you are, and how to contact you. The web site just confirms that you exist; many people will check your website just to find out about you.

Some do's and don't's:

1. Do make sure your website loads quickly over dialup. Make sure you have only a minimum amount of graphics on your home page, and make sure all images are small (64 KB per image max). You can always put bigger graphics on other pages, but if it takes forever for your home page to load, the customer will give up. When testing how fast a web page loads, first clear your cache so you see it just as a first-time customer does.

2. Make sure it works and looks right with the most popular browsers. This means IE and Firefox as a minimum, with Chrome rising quickly.

3. Don't use Flash on your site. Ever.

4. Simple and easy to navigate beats flashy and incomprehensible every time. Remember, the point is to satisfy your customers' interest, not to impress your own management.

5. In this day and age, it's a good idea to make sure your site is accessible from a hand-held device.

You would'nt dare these days not having an email address. I know a few that say they don't but they have wive's or others to provide the information. In business, the importance of being able to see, speak to and engage your customer and them to you is expected to happen in almost real time. A web site for a business is expected by almost all your client's. It's their way of seeing you. Fancy brochures don't always stay with the person you just gave them to but the web is there for them at home, on their cell phone and in the office. Searching the web has replaced the Yellow Pages and by a very high precentage, customers hit the web first before they buy. Today, you're expected to have some sort of web presence. It's just one more tool. Find a good company to talk with and don't trust the kid down the street. Talk to several and don't run backwards from the first number they give you. It's like buying a car. You build to a budget. But, you have know the price going in so you can form the budget.

I use my website everyday. I send links to people and they get on it and buy without me doing a thing. It is totally essential for me. I would be doing only one hundreth of the business without it.

We have one for our business. Basically, no one under 50 or 60 uses the yellow pages anymore. You need at least a simple site.

we track our new customers coming in to our shop. 90% of all new customers found us on the internet. when we ran radio advertisement, it yielded 10-15% customer response. the internet was way more bang for the buck regarding advertising. also have a professionally done website.

At lease around here it seems like it is word of mouth. I guess each area is different.

jocco, here is a link to my shops website. also on the site is a link to the company that designed it. they maintain the site for us.
poke here

Come across a seller on ebay with 180,000 items sold which must be full time job.

Only thing with web sites who is pokeing around for every little items when most have to hold down a job. Mark Martin did have go daddy web site on his race car never looked to see what it is about. Figured if I needed an item I would already have it.

I called up go daddy last week to inquire about a site for an organization. All I wanted to do was ask some questions but got hit with the 25% off deal and ended up buying one. Now I'm studying html to set up a web page. Once I figure out how to have a header across the top in one color, change to another color in the body, and back to the same color as the header for the footer, the rest is just typing in info. I have system for the link buttons but I can't get the colors to change for different parts of the page.

I think MarkB gave some good advice on the home page. I will follow it. I also want to have 2 or 3 webcams on one page.