Why do you need to be online?
The rate at which businesses are establishing an online presence is astounding. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, by 2009, over 30% of businesses with 4 or less employees, over 50% of businesses with 5-19 employees, over 70% of businesses with 20-199 employees and 95% of busineeses with 200+ employees had an online presense. By the time you read this, those numbers would have grown dramatically.
So what? The chances are that right now, most of your competitors are either online already or are planning to be online in the very near future. Today, being online is as important as having a mobile phone was 10 years ago, or having a telephone was 20 years ago… it is a direct measure, by potential (and at times, current) customers, of your business' capabilities, professionalism and of your ability to adequately service their needs into the future. At last count, at the end of 2010, there were 10.4 million active internet subscriptions in Australia. With total Australian households at around 8 million, this equates to around 1.3 internet connections per household; with the majority of users online every day. Today, the internet is by far the primary research tool for consumers and businesses looking for goods or services.
Our Solution is Simple...
We recognize that for most small businesses, getting online is not easy... We solve that problem for you by doing everything for you.
We provide you with a dedicated domain (website) name, build you a website, and maintain the website for you. All you do is provide us with your business information and then send us an update whenever necessary. Included in your monthly fee is one major change per month. This allows you to provide, for example:
We understand that getting online, whilst presented as being simple, is anything but that. The process is generally long, cumbersome and usually prohibitively expensive, often costing in excess of $10,000 just to get online. The internet is still a relatively new industry and is therefore still quite inefficient, with a mish-mash of services needing to come together to build and maintain your online profile.
You need: a domain name, registration of that domain name, with reregistration of the name every 2 years. You need to spec your site and get your site built. Then you need to decide where to host your site. You need to ensure that your site is optimized so that people and search engines looking for your goods or services can find you and configured so that people looking for your business can find you. Once your site is up and running, it needs to be kept live; maintained and updated; and monitored.
Some no-cost services (eg. Google Places/ True Local) are available that provide a quasi-site, allowing you to present information on their website about your business. They make their living by selling advertising on or around your site. Whilst the service they offer is without doubt beneficial, it cannot substitute for a dedicated website, both in terms of how your customers perceive it, and in terms of your ability to customize it. You will also still need to apply for it, format it, activate it and maintain it. (Incidentally, as part of our service, we will apply for, build, activate and maintain a Google Places site on your behalf.)