Questions about websites

Creating and maintaining a website

If you are in any kind of serious business, having a website is a must. Most customers expect to be able to go online to find out basic information about your business: your hours, what kinds of products you carry, services you offer, your hours and location.

A website can:

• Introduce your company to new customers to what you do and what your product is. You can tell them in as much detail as you want, including testimonials form customers, detailed product specs, and certifications.
• Help tell existing customers what new products and services you do in as much detail as you want.

A nicely designed website goes a long way to establish your credibility with a new customer (crucial for service businesses), making that initial contact from them much, much easier.

Options for building a website

There are many ways to build a website, and choosing an option depends on what features you need, and especially how you want to update it. Here is a simple breakdown of options:

Requirements: Small business site, small number of pages, edits made less than once a month.

Solution: We can build this as a straight html site (in Dreamweaver), or we can build this in a simple content management system (Joomla). Advantages: costs stay low ($2500 - $4000), but expandability is somewhat limited (but this is ok, since you only need a few pages on your site anyway!)

Requirements: Having a database of products online, or a members only area, or able to have several people regularly edit the site.

Solution: You need a robust content management system that can expand with the company. Working with Emergence by Design, we can develop a sophisticated system that can do everything from member-only pages, e-commerce transactions, and product databases. Advantages: the ability to add-on features to the website is virtually unlimited.