Creating a Website is Not Enough

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.