Your Website is Worth More than a Cup of Coffee

Network Solutions has been running a radio spot advertising $4.99 Websites, an ad that makes me want to scream.

I want to scream because I get so many calls from small business owners who are pulling out their hair. They’re not getting any traffic, they can’t find their site in Google, and no one is calling them.

Half the time it’s because they’ve fallen prey to these sales pitches.

People, here is the simple truth: Go with a $4.99 Website and you’ll get $4.99 worth of results.

Think about that for a minute. If you’re a manufacturing company with over $1 million in revenues each year, you need to generate XX number of calls and emails to generate that $1 million (or more) year after year.

People are online searching, interacting, reading, emailing, chatting, Tweeting, blogging, video watching, and Facebooking.

Doesn’t it make sense to put your money where your customers are?

Yet I meet people all the time who will spend more money on a daily cup of coffee than they will developing a Website that attracts new customers.

Spending the equivalent of a Grande Iced Caramel Macchiato isn’t going to get you a site that helps you generate $1 million in business — or even a few hundred thousand.

That’s because a $4.99 Website doesn’t even begin to cover the costs associated with successfully marketing your business online, including:

1. Custom Web design — The problem with using those templated, one-size-fits-all Websites offered by all-in-one “Web solutions providers” is that you end up with a a cheap ugly site that looks just like all the other businesses using that cheap ugly template.

Your business is unique and as such, your site should incorporate your brand, your message, and even your own photographs.

Your Website is also your virtual storefront. I don’t know about you, but when I’m out in the real world, I can tell instantly whether or not a business is doing well — I just look at its store front. Either I want to walk in — or I walk away.

Your Website is the same. Don’t scare people away with crappy design.

For great design, you can call Rachel Cunliffe at Cre8d Design who specializes in WordPress, Jim Somers at Sonora DesignWorks, Matthew Nelson at Digital Marketing Frontier, or Mike Smith, a Web developer.

2. Search engine optimization — Forget all the crap you’ve heard about putting keywords in a “meta tag.” Google is constantly changing and adjusting to marketplace revolutions, including Twitter, Facebook, and video, and what was true yesterday isn’t true today.

If you want people to find your site in the search engines, you’ll need to hire an SEO firm who knows what it’s doing. You can call someone like me, or Jill Whalen at High Rankings, Andy Komack or Derek Edmond at Komarketing Associates, or Susan O’Neill at @Website Publicity. (I know all of these people and how they work and *highly* recommend them.)

3. Content, content, content — Your Website is a dynamic entity that needs to breathe and grow. You help it grow by constantly creating new content: blogs, e-books, white papers, reports, guides, videos, podcasts, e-newsletters, articles, Webinars, etc.

Ignore this step and you are hosed. It’s that simple.

4. Social media — You use social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, YouTube, Google Buzz, etc. to alert your customers, fans, followers, influencers, and others that you have new content.

These people pass your content on their fans, followers, influencers and others — driving traffic and building links to your site.

Ignore this step — and step #1 — and your site will wither and die no matter how much great content you have.

5. Time — Whether you do all of this yourself, hire an experienced online marketing person for your team or outsource it, marketing your Website takes time. Lots of time.

Web marketing is changing constantly. Last year at this time we didn’t have Google Buzz or Facebook’s new “I like” feature. Matt Cutts hadn’t yet said that Google is looking to see if sites have video — and ranking them accordingly. Smart phones were cool but marketers didn’t really see that mobile marketing is dramatically changing how we all approach the Web.

Sure, you can spend $4.99 and build yourself a cheap Website. But if had the same $4.99, I’d buy a cup of coffee and then sit down to write my resume — because relying on a cheap Website to grow my business would essentially mean I’d be out of business.