Creating a website scares many small /
medium-sized businesses, requires an economic investment, an additional time
commitment.
Before creating a new website, it is first
of all necessary to take stock of the company situation.
Here
is what we need to evaluate to start a web development project:
·
Establish what goal we set for
the new project.
·
Quantify the time we can devote
to the project.
·
Define the limit on the economic
resources we want to invest .
·
Understand if we are willing to
question our business model .
Why
create a new website
The goal can be economic if we want to earn
directly from the website;
The goal can be simply communicative if the
site is to serve as an exhibition "showcase" of our way of working or
our products. In this case, the site will not directly produce our source of
income.
Build
a site to make a direct profit from it
The websites that generate profit through
the sale of "products" or "services" are normally high-tech
websites, or sites that must guarantee maximum performance and continuity of
operation. A typical website in this case are e-commerce websites.
They are sites with a usually higher cost ,
and require a certain effort in their construction, but when they are artfully
made they allow a continuity of production that can guarantee us constant
revenues .
Create
a showcase site to represent yourself in the best way
A showcase site is normally designed to
target customers from a communicative point of view. They must convey the way
we work and the level of quality that we offer with effective communication .
The aesthetics of the showcase websites
comes first and must be taken care of hand in hand with the quality of the
texts.
How
long can we spend building a website?
For the creation of a website, the working
resources in the field are numerous and this corresponds to a large number of
hours of work invested. Already only the preparation of a clear and well
structured estimate costs the web
agency a few hours of work which will have to be paid to some extent. Then
the website design, the realization of the design, the digitization of the
logo, the conception of navigation, the usability and functioning tests, the
writing of the texts and the choice of the best images.
All activities that require time and a very
high dose of consistency to be qualitatively superior.
A website that produces a continuity of
income requires, for these reasons, a large number of hours of work and
therefore, necessarily, a higher cost.
How
much does it cost to build a website?
The answer may seem trivial but it is: the
cost of a website depends on the goal we have set ourselves. But wondering how
much a website costs is, from an entrepreneurial point of view, one of those
badly asked questions.
The real question should be rather: what
will I spend on building a website that will be able to amortize the economic
(and time) investment? Will the investment on time be adequately remunerated?
For a website to be profitable it must meet
a series of very strict requirements:
·
The site must be well positioned
in the search engines .
·
Collect customer interest.
·
Stimulate the purchase action
or direct contact .
·
Respond to specific and
well-circumscribed needs (avoiding being too general a website);
Unfortunately, a site made to art must tell
us frankly it cannot cost $ 99.00 including VAT. Nor can we think we can do it
alone if we intend to reap economic results in a short time.
The technical skills that underlie the
creation of a website are so many that it is impossible to be able to undertake
the construction independently.
Change
the business model when creating a website
Don't give me advice, I know I'm wrong ...
Many customers prefer to make mistakes on
their own rather than being badly advised. Few are able to accept the advice of
a web expert. The leap of confidence is dangerous, we realize it but it is
always possible to ask for references when you want to establish a
collaborative relationship with a web agency as well as a freelance.
Often when you want to create a website you
need to change or at least adapt your business model. We have verified too
often that it is precisely the companies of the predigital era that are
defensive by stating that if their business model has worked so far there is no
reason why it should not work in the future. Precisely this prevents them from
transforming and adapting to new technologies.
Unfortunately, the reality is another:
digital has radically changed the way we do business . The Internet and
websites have changed the way we organize work and represent ourselves to the
world.
Building
a website is not enough
Our conclusion is that if we want a
productive website we must not only hire a web designer capable of
"technically" building a website but above all we must be able to
rethink the building blocks of our company :
Rethinking
our business model:
·
Organization.
·
Products and Services.
·
Price list.
·
Production procedures.
Redesign
the way we represent ourselves to our potential customers:
·
The foundations of our brand (what
the British call "brand")
·
The logo and the distinctive
graphic signs
·
The methods of communication
and the language adopted.
To develop a good
website, we must be ready to question many aspects of our way of working
without being afraid that this will deprive us of our professional or corporate
identity.
Today the first great ability to survive a
world that is moving fast is precisely the speed in adapting to changes .
Those who do not adapt are out of the
market.
