12 Benefits Of Having A Website

Web Design Nepal

Some of the goals that can be achieved by launching a website include the following:

1. Far Cheaper and Much More Flexible Than Print Advertising
The Internet is extremely different from print advertising in that space is cheap, your advertisement is accessible for a longer period of time, the content can be changed without having to ask someone to do it for you (if you use a content management system) and you can potentially reach a wider audience.

This is not to say that you should not use other forms of advertising at all   You can use it to entice people to visit your website and find out about your company and potentially open two-way communication between the potential customer and a sales person.

2. Market Expansion
The Internet has allowed businesses to break through the geographical barriers and become accessible, virtually, from any country in the world by a potential customer that has Internet access.

3. Diversify Revenue Streams
A website is not just a medium for representation of your company, it is a form of media from which everybody can acquire information. You can use this media to sell advertising space to other businesses.

A recent trend has risen where businesses feature their very own directory of complimentary services, where the visitor can search for information on a business that will enhance the use of your service. The business sells complimentary businesses a listing in their directory.

A good example is a catering company featuring a directory with businesses such as event co-coordinators, electronic equipment rental companies, etc.

4. 24 7 365
No more turning customers away when its time to close shop, putting up a note saying  closed for public holiday , or leaving an irritating message on your answering service specifying your trading hours   tell them to visit your website for information they are looking for.

5. Offer Convenience
It is far more convenient for a person to research a product on the Internet than it is to get in a car, drive somewhere and look for or ask someone for information on a product. Also, a potential customer won t have to judge a call centre agent to determine whether he/she has their best interests in mind, or just wants to make a sale.

The potential customer can visit your website whenever they like in their own privacy and comfort, without the stresses and distractions that exist in the  real world .
Your website is a self-service medium   for example, instead of having to wait in a long cue to pay your TV License, you can now do it electronically through the TV License website.

6. Add Value and Satisfaction
By offering convenience, a point of reference and that touch of individualized customer service, you ultimately add value to your offering and your customers experience a higher level of satisfaction.

Your website can add value in other ways too, by featuring tips, advice and general interest content you can  entertain  your customers. This will also help them remember you better.

7. Standardize Sales Performance
By looking at which approached / pitches have worked in the past and those which have not, you can produce the ultimate pitch and use it with your website, so that you use it on every customer. No more training of sales people and waiting for them to get a feel for your line of trade.

8. Improve credibility
A website gives you the opportunity to tell potential customers what you are about and why you deserve their trust and confidence. In fact, many people use the internet for pre-purchase research so that they can determine for themselves whether a particular supplier or brand is worthy of their patronage, and won t take them for a ride.
The Internet also allows for Viral Marketing   where your website visitors spread positive word-of-mouth about your business – your customers do your marketing!

9. Promote your  Brick  n  Mortar  Presence
Getting lost trying to find a place can be frustrating for a potential customer. You can publish what they call a  dummy map  on your website, which shows directions and landmarks graphically, and the potential customer can print it out when looking for your  Brick  n  Mortar  premises.

You might advertise a promotion on your website encouraging the visitor to visit your  Brick  n  Mortar  premises (e.g..  At a branch near you! ).
Also, if you recently moved to a new location, you will have to wait for the next ‘phone directory to come out before people figure out where you currently are. Because a website is flexible   you can change the content as you like   you can change you contact details instantly and lower the risk of losing customers when moving to a new location.

10. Growth Opportunity
A website serves as a great place to refer potential investors to, to show them what your company is about, what it has achieved and what it can achieve in future.

11. Two-Way Communicative Marketing
Customers can quickly and easily give feedback on your product and/or marketing approach.

12. Cheap Market Research
You can use features on your website such as visitor polls, online surveys and your website statistics to find out what your customers like more and how they feel about certain aspects of your business to determine how you can improve your product and the way you do business.

Website statistics show you how much traffic your website receives, how the visitor got to your website and where, geographically, the visitor is from.

Text is More Important Than Images on the Web

The Web is primarily a text-driven medium and will remain so despite the rise of video.

“Dominant headlines most often draw the eye first upon entering the page — especially when they are in the upper left, and most often (but not always) when in the upper right,” according to Eyetrack III from Poynter Institute. This study of how people consume news websites found that, “Photographs, contrary to what you might expect (and contrary to findings of 1990 Poynter eyetracking research on print newspapers), aren’t typically the entry point to a homepage. Text rules on the PC screen — both in order viewed and in overall time spent looking at it.”

In traditional print media it has long been established that images are more powerful than text in getting attention. But the opposite is the case on the Web.
Text dominates. Consider the Google business model. It makes most of its money from advertising. What sort of advertising? AdWords. Text. Google has never sold a graphical ad on google.com.

That is totally contrary to the traditional print and TV ad industry. There, the more color, the more fantastic the image, the bigger the impact. It’s the opposite on the Web.

What is interesting about Eyetrack III is how consistent its results are with various other web behavior studies that have been conducted over the years. It’s long been known that the first couple of words are vital if you want to keep people reading.

The study found that:

1. When people look at blurbs (summaries) under headlines on news homepages, they often only look at the left one-third of the blurb. In other words, most people just look at the first couple of words — and only read on if they are engaged by those words.
2. People typically scan down a list of headlines, and often don’t view entire headlines. If the first words engage them, they seem likely to read on.

On average, a headline has less than a second of a site visitor’s attention. For headlines — especially longer ones — it would appear that the first couple of words need to be real attention-grabbers if you want to capture eyes.

The study found that average blurb length varies from a low of about 10 words to a high of 25, with most sites coming in at around 17. In 2009, Customer Carewords did a study of over 500 news headlines. We found that 87 percent of headlines analyzed were between 5 and 9 words long, with the most popular headline length being 7 words.

Some people think that I hate images and video. Absolutely not. Anyone who has seen my presentations will know that I use hardly any text. It’s all visuals and images. Why? Because after doing thousands of presentations I’ve found that telling a story based on a series of powerful images is very effective. A list of text-based bullet points bores people to death.

The issue is not whether text is inherently better than images. It’s about using the right tool for the right medium. On the Web, text dominates. Will there be exceptions? Of course. But they will be exceptions that prove the rule: text dominates.

source: cmswire.com