Does your business need a new website 

If you have a small local Devon based business without a website where do you get new customers from?

For most businesses it will probably be personal recommendation, local advertising and the local yellow pages and/or other directories.  If this is you then you will eventually need your own website - and here is Why?

Your market place i.e. your customers are changing the way they source local businesses and whilst paper based directories and newspapers will be around for many years, increasingly your customers are looking online to find local businesses and services.  Unfortunately, if you rely only on recommendation and local paper based advertising you are missing out on a huge number of customers looking for your service online.

In the UK there is a huge shift from businesses using traditional media to advertise there business to using online advertising as shown in these 2 recent industry quotes

“2006 was a tough 12 months for the advertising market as a whole, but once again the internet bucked the trend, recording a 41% increase in ad revenues.” - Guy Phillipson, IAB CEO

“The incredible growth of online has beaten all the industry predictions. The internet has now overtaken National Press as marketers have followed their audiences online and enjoyed measurable returns on their investment.” - Paul Pilkington, Director, Entertainment and Media practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

The growth in online advertising and the decrease in paper based and media advertising clearly demonstrates that businesses believe that more and more of their potential customers are using the internet to source products and services.  This is true on both a national and local level and is backed up by the comments from local businesses that are already benefiting from having a website and promoting it online using search engines and online directories as well as including their domain name in all paper based advertising and on their business stationery.

If you are a local business, small or large interested in finding new customers then you need a website as without one you’re seriously restricting your marketplace.

Choosing the right web developer is essential to having a successful online presence.  Choose a company who can optimise your site for the search engines and get you to the top of Google for your chosen search terms and insist that they show you examples of companies that they have achieved this for already.