No small companies are alike, but most want to be like their large counterparts in a few key respects. For instance, even if you very own a agency with only a few truely superb clients, you need to be seen enough to attract new customers, raise your odds of securing repeat business and do all you could to improve patron satisfaction.
The key, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), is having a business Web web page. The SBA’s personal Web site notes that the Web “degrees the gambling discipline among small commercial enterprise and large business” because it is this sort of dynamic, less expensive medium for marketing and customer support. “The Internet is making it feasible for small- to medium-sized groups to compete with the big men,” the SBA said.
Conventional knowledge says that any business with out a Web presence these days is at a awesome disadvantage, however the ultra-modern International Data Corporation (IDC) small-business studies exposes a stunning gap. The IDC studies located that of the 6.Eight million corporations in the United States with fewer than 10 employees, most effective three.Eight million have a Web web page. “That way three million U.S. Small companies-or 44 percent of the overall-aren’t the usage of the Internet to sell themselves on line or have interaction clients and prospects,” said Ray Boggs, vice chairman of Small/ Medium Business and Home Office Research at IDC. “In brand new linked international, organizations that take that step generally find that having their very own Web website can supply a considerable opportunity to develop their enterprise, particularly if the web site is up to date often.”
Clearly, small organizations (and lots of their clients) are on line, yet extra than 1/2 aren’t exploiting the total strength of what the Internet can do to assist construct their enterprise. That power includes developing a dynamic Web web site to attract and keep clients, taking gain of search engines like google to intensify recognition of a organisation in modern international market, and speaking with customers across the clock or at their convenience.
What stops small corporations from stepping up to this stage? For many, the barriers are price, complexity and inconvenience. By its nature, a small commercial enterprise commonly has a small finances and an similarly small workforce. Unlike the bigger organizations it competes with, a small business usually can’t come up with the money for to spend thousands of bucks to buy a server, create a complex infrastructure and rent an IT technician to hold all of it strolling easily.
The appropriate news is that a few new services are cropping up that allow you to set up a Web presence with out heavy-duty in-house technical sources and a huge cash outlay. For example, Microsoft Corp. Has a new Internet-primarily based service known as Microsoft Office Live, which at the maximum primary degree affords a small enterprise with a site call, e-mail debts and a Web site at no cost.* It’s one of the fastest and easiest ways today to get your commercial enterprise at the Internet. And, as it’s supported with the aid of advertising and marketing revenue, and the advertising is designed to be unobtrusive and not seem within the purchaser’s public-going through Web sites, the fundamental presenting is unfastened. Yes, it is loose, and you may sign on to check-pressure the service at http://www.Officelive.Com.
“I need an attractive, easy-to-navigate Web website that I can replace frequently and correctly. With Office Live, I can create a slide display of a sailboat race and feature it online earlier than the boats even get back to the dock,” said Elizabeth T. Becker, a freelance writer and photographer and owner of Seaport Photography. “That way I get to spend much less time in the front of my computer and greater time at the back of my digital camera. It’s smooth sailing.” Becker’s Web web site may be visible at http://www.Seaport photo.Com.
With such an all-in-one answer, a small-enterprise Web web site in reality is a no-brainer. Look at it this way: In an afternoon and age whilst most people of Americans use the Internet often, it’s fairly probable that a big percentage of your customers do, too.
