Does my Business Need a Website?
by Kenneth L. Cluck III

Does my business need a website? That’s a question many people ask. Well, you see all the time businesses telling you go to some URL (web address) to find more information, to order products, or to purchase services. That's a question that business owners everywhere should ask themselves. The next question is “How do I do this?” Well, it may not be as hard or expensive as you may think.

When someone learns about your business they look at contact information a lot more than you may think. You own a professional business and your customers expect you to be professional. Even if you don’t generate revenue from going online, it’s still a very good idea. Also, it’s very easy to distribute information such as common questions, contact information, and product information. You don’t have to continuously handle potential customers while they still find out the information they desire. It only costs $50 to $100 a year to own and run a website, this may even save you money on having to talk to customers and save you a lot of time.

Some web hosts (services that hold your website for the public to see) offer special tools to easily make a website. While also, most word processing software comes with tools to easily design and build your website. So you don’t even need to know how to build a website. For a list of web hosting services you can look at many web host directories, one place I suggest looking at www.findmywebhost.org to find your web host because they offer more options to help you with your searches, such as being able to list web hosts that offer website builders. Though if you're still not comfortable designing your own website there are many services that do it for you. The place I work at is Clearwater Web Solutions at www.clearwaterwebsolutions.com, they specialize in website creation, design, and maintenance.

People may ask, why not use a free web hosting service? Well the answer is very simple. Free web hosts don’t offer enough, and many people don’t trust websites hosted on free services as much as websites that have domain names (a .com .net .org URL) and are on a paid service because it shows that the business isn't serious enough about their products or services to spend money distributing them. Websites that try to look professional won’t if they are put on a free service. Put it on a paid service and people will trust your business a lot more. Not only that, but businesses with websites generally do look more advanced and much more professional.

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