Are You Renting Your Business?

Running a business in the new economy means we all have budgets and cash flow concerns.  Does it make business sense to "rent" your business or to pay a charge each month to continue your business? Can you afford to own your website?

The way business is conducted in this age of information sharing is very different then it was before the internet.  Your competition is no longer limited to the other businesses in your town.  Your customers and clients have choices that they didn't have before.  They have become educated on finding what they want or need online.  They've also become very critical.  You have 3 -7 seconds to capture their attention and start to build their trust or they simply click out of your site.

Because they are not walking into your store and being greeted and shown around, they only get to make their determination about if they are going to conduct business with you based on what your website is telling them.  Not just in the content they see but the over look of your site.

What's great for you is that websites are virtual real estate and that means that you're not limited to how much space you can use to really knock their socks off.  What seems to happen in the virtual business world is we tend to treat our websites much different then we would treat our brick and mortar stores or offices.

We know that our physical business locations have to look like a professional business.  We would never accept putting a cardboard box up to hold our cash register and we don't put up signs over our products and services that were written on poster board.  Why don't we do that?  Because visitors to our store would not trust us enough to spend their money.  They most certainly would not be sending their social circles in to see our business unless it was to win a bet for the worst looking shop ever.

So why do so many business owners feel that it's okay to use cardboard websites?  Better yet, why would you ever think that the search engines would offer your website up as a top ten option for people looking for your expertise and products when there are 600 million other sites that are doing a better job of building trust via their websites.

Web design and development is an industry that can be hard to understand when it comes to cost of product.  One thing that comes up with just about every new conversation we have with a business client is cost. Most have been quoted tens of thousands of dollars on a quote and feel like they have no other choices but to go with a pay per month business model for their websites.

If you missed the cost that the new health care website cost ($38.5 Million) then you have to know that paying a huge amount for development of your website does not guarantee that you get a finished product that works.   It's hard to put an MSRP on a website design.  You are not paying for the cost of the product as much as you are paying for the time that it takes for the design and development team to create your vision in the virtual space and to make sure that each line of code is doing it's job.

Before you jump into a relationship with a "free" or pay by the month company, get in touch with a development firm that you trust and talk to them.  Don't just ask questions.  You are not in the business of web design and development.  You don't know what questions to ask, bottom line.  If your design company really does understand what you want and see for the future of your business, they will help you understand what you need in your website and can get it created for you.

If you don't have or know a web design company that you trust.  Trust us.  Amanda (our project manager) will spend the time with you thats needed to make sure you're asking the right questions to get the right end product.  She'll share her screen and show you live why your website is or is not going in the right direction. 

Before you commit to writing a check each month to a "business partner" that has no support and increases their portion of your business pie each time you grow, make sure that you know what your real options were.

Call us now 719 302-5029 and find out the true cost of renting your business.