Does your business need a website?

Tweet In short, yes! Having a web presence ensures that your customers and potential customers as well as potential employees or business partners can find information about your business and the products/services that you offer. For some companies, one or two pages are sufficient to give information on products/services, location, hours of operation and contact information. For others, a web store, blog or even multimedia content such as a video may be the best way to represent their brand on-line and gain new business.

In this video, the Better Business Bureau suggests asking yourself if customers already find your business using the web and also if your competitors have a website. If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then you need a website.

Once you decide to invest in a website, consider the following:

What domain name best represents your company? You will have to find out if the domain name is available and purchase a license.

What information needs to be on your website? Address,contact information, hours of service, information on your products/service

How can you stand out from the competition? CONTENT RULES! What information will you provide to visitors to make them go with you instead of the competition.

What images best represent your brand? Your site must have a consistent look and tie in to your logo and off-line branding/marketing materials.

You will need a web hosting service to make your website "live." Do a Google search to find web hosting services. (Note: NMC offers web hosting and domain name registration services)

Last, you will need to design your website. For business owners with limited budgets, WordPress (see tutorial) and Blogger (tutorial here) are simple, free, do-it-yourself options for creating a website (yes, you can use these blogging sites to create web pages and you won't have to worry about finding a web host). For companies desiring a more complicated site with many pages or multimedia elements, it's best to go with a knowledgeable web designer, such as New Millennum Computers, that can help you to create a sleek, professional-looking website that also meets your business needs.