Here is a scenario…A family member of mine runs a reasonably successful industrial business manufacturing products for the mining industry. They never had a website, until they came to reality at a trade fair in China.
When speaking to prospective clients and other suppliers they realized that no one was interested in their sales pitch, they wanted to view their website before talking business. Their client base grew at a snails pace. After talking them into developing a website their sales have not only increased but their reputation in their industry has grown remarkably.
Why? Because they are as far away as a search engine from every prospect in the world, their clients can compare products and services without wasting time with sales pitches and presentations.
Another scenario… A B&B that I use in Cape Town, offered a first class service but weren’t meeting their expenses because they are one of many in the area but not getting nowhere near enough bookings to keep up with the cost. On one of my visits I showed them the benefit of having their own website and how to link it to directories for local and overseas travelers to find. The misconception they had was that it was very expensive and couldn’t handle the additional cost until we proved that it is the least expensive and extremely popular form of advertising. Since then we have to book way in advance to get a booking or go somewhere else.
What makes us different from other website developers is our level of expertise, which doesn't cost the earth.
Anyone is able to create or develop a website using off the shelf technologies that require very little coding knowledge. Those sites might work to the satisfaction of the creator but not to the standards as laid down by the world wide consortium for web standards W3C. And without the touch of an experienced search engine optimization technician there is little if no hope of getting found on the internet.
When speaking to prospective clients and other suppliers they realized that no one was interested in their sales pitch, they wanted to view their website before talking business. Their client base grew at a snails pace. After talking them into developing a website their sales have not only increased but their reputation in their industry has grown remarkably.
Why? Because they are as far away as a search engine from every prospect in the world, their clients can compare products and services without wasting time with sales pitches and presentations.
Another scenario… A B&B that I use in Cape Town, offered a first class service but weren’t meeting their expenses because they are one of many in the area but not getting nowhere near enough bookings to keep up with the cost. On one of my visits I showed them the benefit of having their own website and how to link it to directories for local and overseas travelers to find. The misconception they had was that it was very expensive and couldn’t handle the additional cost until we proved that it is the least expensive and extremely popular form of advertising. Since then we have to book way in advance to get a booking or go somewhere else.
What makes us different from other website developers is our level of expertise, which doesn't cost the earth.
Anyone is able to create or develop a website using off the shelf technologies that require very little coding knowledge. Those sites might work to the satisfaction of the creator but not to the standards as laid down by the world wide consortium for web standards W3C. And without the touch of an experienced search engine optimization technician there is little if no hope of getting found on the internet.
Who does not need a website? Continued...
Let us make a comparison...
Most people in the world that have access to the internet have Googled something or the other. With A website that is search engine optimized the query should come up on the first or second page preferably at the top of the first search result. If you where looking for a service in a trade magazine you would generally need to page through the magazine until you find what you want and most the time won't find it at all.
We were looking to have our premises revamped with carpeting, wall coatings and fixtures, we receive a home improvement magazine in the post box every couple of weeks and paged through to see if we could find local suppliers that could match our expectations, there are many lovely pictures with phone numbers and e-mail addresses but very few who had websites to show off their wares. Like most people we prefer a little information before we pick up the phone and question the company on pricing, brands and samples. And we would prefer the information now, not wait for a phone call which invariably never comes.
If suppliers were only aware of the power of having a website developed and optimized the need to page through magazines and make unnecessary phone calls could be avoided altogether.
So we enquired about the cost to advertise and distribution of one of these magazines and was astonished to find that to advertise once in one of these magazines which gets delivered to 25000 homes is more than a person will spend on website development and hosting for a year. Do the sums…25000 vs 6 billion, okay that's world wide, in South Africa we have 4.6 million, if we divided that up by 9 provinces that's about 500 000 per province, which is a regional reach of 200 times more. Lets take the cost of an ad and one of a website of R10 000.00 the cost per person on the magazine is 40cents for each time they publish an ad, multiply that by 12 (for a year) and the cost to advertise is R120 000 per annum but cost for the website is 2 cents, or R10000 once off.
We were looking to have our premises revamped with carpeting, wall coatings and fixtures, we receive a home improvement magazine in the post box every couple of weeks and paged through to see if we could find local suppliers that could match our expectations, there are many lovely pictures with phone numbers and e-mail addresses but very few who had websites to show off their wares. Like most people we prefer a little information before we pick up the phone and question the company on pricing, brands and samples. And we would prefer the information now, not wait for a phone call which invariably never comes.
If suppliers were only aware of the power of having a website developed and optimized the need to page through magazines and make unnecessary phone calls could be avoided altogether.
So we enquired about the cost to advertise and distribution of one of these magazines and was astonished to find that to advertise once in one of these magazines which gets delivered to 25000 homes is more than a person will spend on website development and hosting for a year. Do the sums…25000 vs 6 billion, okay that's world wide, in South Africa we have 4.6 million, if we divided that up by 9 provinces that's about 500 000 per province, which is a regional reach of 200 times more. Lets take the cost of an ad and one of a website of R10 000.00 the cost per person on the magazine is 40cents for each time they publish an ad, multiply that by 12 (for a year) and the cost to advertise is R120 000 per annum but cost for the website is 2 cents, or R10000 once off.
