The benefits of a website Mar 1st '10

You may think that this is a straightforward and easy question to answer, however many companies just have a website for needs sake. When you know the benefits of a website only then can you really start to exploit them.

Websites, in a business sense, are used for many different reasons including:

• A brochure site, showing previous work and acting as an online brochure
• A glorified business card, just showing contact details and a few lines about the company
• A fully interactive site where the users visit on a daily basis to be part of the community
• A way for companies to blog and keep their users in the loop

As you can imagine, the list is endless. The point to remember is that your website can do a lot, much more than you can imagine. I will just run through the top three sorts of websites we see on a daily basis.

The brochure site

This is by far the most common, a site mainly used to show the company information and perhaps a list of previous work. These websites generally require little to no maintenance and are the sort of websites you see with out of date information (entries in the ‘Latest News’ section dated 2003, for example!). If your website is like this it is important to remember to keep it updated, even if you only do it every month. Your business changes on a daily basis and your website must reflect this.

The social media site

This sort of site is becoming very important, what with the recent rise of social media. Companies are connecting with their users via blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other online channels. These sorts of sites require more maintenance; out of the three they probably require the most. The advantages you can gain are big as your clients will feel more connected to the business and are more likely to return to you for repeat business or refer you to their contacts.

The all singing website

These sites take it one stage further. They are generally bespoke and allow the owner of the website to maintain it quickly and easily. Many of these sites have communities built around them. This community can often sustain itself, providing new content to your site on a daily basis without the site owner having to create it. The main role of the site owner is to keep the community going, if it has one. It’s a catch 22 but the more active a community the more people join it.

Written by Oliver Culverhouse

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