Does your business have a website?
Saturday, March 27th, 2010While driving around town the other day I came across a vehicle adorned with information about their business displayed on the rear window. It’s a great way to advertise your business and I’m fully in support of people doing that. But as I was reading the advertisement my eyes settled near the bottom of it to where they had listed their email address, and I came up with the idea for this post.
If you own a business, of any size, you should have some sort of online web presence. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to sell, or have much information you can think of to provide through your website, you should have one. People looking for ways to contact or even visit your business more and more search online. At the very least your website should give a phone number, where you are located with a map (assuming you have a physical presence they can visit), hours of operation, and a brief synopsis of what it is your company does.
You should choose something memorable for the name of your website, preferably with your business name incorporated somehow. This can be a bit tricky since there are so many registered domains out there, but with a small bit of creativity you should be able to come up with something that is available. You can then setup a custom email address of whateveryouwant@yourdomainname this gives your business a much more professional look than somethingaboutyourbusiness@freeemailservice. That was what I saw at the bottom of the sign I spotted, their email was something@yahoo.com (don’t remember what it was). However, if it had been a custom domain name it wouldn’t have mattered if I couldn’t remember the exact email, I could have just remembered the name and looked it up online.
Another quick thought on getting a domain setup would be to prevent someone else from “cyber-squatting” on a domain name as your business grows. You don’t want to decide somewhere in the future to get your business online only to find out that someone else has registered the domain name you wanted and now you either have to choose a different variation, or worse yet, pay them a ridiculous amount to buy your domain from them.
So if your business doesn’t already have a web presence, I suggest you put some serious consideration into rectifying this situation as quickly as possible. The costs can be surprisingly cheap (I know of ways you could have it all setup and operational for well under $100/year if you are willing to figure out how to do it yourself). If you don’t think you would be able to set it up yourself, do a little google searching and contact some local web designers. Most reputable places should be happy to get you all setup with a basic site (homepage, contact us page, and maybe a FAQ [Frequently Asked Questions] page), as well as a few custom email addresses for a reasonable set price. You can always decide to upgrade your site later if you think of other ways to take advantage of it. If you contact a few different companies on getting you setup you will most likely find quite a large variance in these pricing structures. So carefully consider what each company is offering in their pricing, the most important thing to consider is who would own the domain name. Make sure you get (in writing) that should you decide to move your website to another provider, the domain name you have chosen is yours to do with as you want. There are some companies out there that will try to tell you the domain name is their property and (again) you may have to buy it off them (at an exorbitant amount).
As a little disclaimer, Tekamba Computers does have such a service, we register the domain, configure our server, design a basic website, and host the site for the first year, in a complete package totaling under $400. Or we can do any variation of those services, and custom structure it to your needs. If your business needs to setup an online presence Tekamba Computers would be happy to help in whatever capacity you may need. Even if you’d just like our feedback/suggestions on how to proceed send us an inquiry. We’d love to have your business, but more important to us is that your own business thrives. So whatever Tekamba Computers can do to help make that happen we are here for.
Good luck in getting your company more exposure online. If you get a site setup, send me a link to it and I’ll be happy to check it over for you and suggest possible ideas to take to your web designer to make improvements.
Greg Hicks
Tekamba Computers, LLC
(928) 458-5260 (we have a new number!)
greg@tekamba.com