A website is going to give potential clients an opportunity to seek further information about your products and/or services. This means that the website gives you an opportunity to extend your sales message beyond a business card, advertisement or referral. You could run a terrific magazine ad that successfully directs loads of traffic to your site, but site visits are not sales. Your site must be a functional piece of your marketing.
We’re all consumers and we all feel overloaded with options and advertisements. When we’re out shopping for something we haven’t tried before we go into "scam-alert" mode… constantly on the lookout for anything that doesn't look up to par. Either steer clear of the internet entirely and give your company the hometown feel, or get yourself a killer website that helps sell your products/services. And, by all means, don't launch an ugly, half-functional website just to have a web address on your business card. It won't help you. It will hurt you.
Will a good website make my business flourish? No, not by itself. Even the best website is still a storefront without windows. People must come looking for something in the store to ever make it inside. There are no passers-by on the internet. Your business needs to be active off-site in order to draw visitors to the site. Some common methods include: regular newsletters through email and/or standard mail, passing out business cards every chance you get, word of mouth between other people, traditional advertising like newspapers and magazines, and online advertising. Some of these methods will work better than others depending on your business and a good web development company can help steer you in the right direction.
How do you know how successful the different methods of advertising are at driving traffic to your site and, ultimately, at making sales (not always a direct correlation between the two). It is the industry standard to have detailed tracking of all activity on your website. This will give you all the data you could ever need. When you send out a newsletter, for example, you can see who on your email list opened the email, who clicked on some link bringing them back to your site, and what they did (made a purchase?) when they came to the site. The same level of detailed tracking applies to all the methods of advertising your business that you can think of. Remember, this level of detailed feedback on the success of your advertising efforts is industry standard. You must have it.
When you're shopping around for a car, you're looking for the best price on a the car you want. You already know what brand and, likely, what model you're interested in. The dealership is just a necessary evil between you and your new vehicle. The less of your cash you end up having to fork over to the middleman, the better.
But when you're shopping around for a dentist, you have different priorities in mind. There isn't a mass-manufactured product with a corporate identity standing behind it. Instead, every bit of dental work is a custom job, a craft being performed by a single person with a drill and glue. It may cost less to have the same procedure performed in a 3rd world country, but any qualified dentist can show you just how different that "same procedure" really is.
A website, like dental work, is a customized service performed exactly to your needs. It is not a one-size-fits-all product that you can "find a good deal on." As for having your site constructed by a friend, relative or other non-professional, again, think dental work. If getting a solid website up is important to you, take it seriously, hire a professional.
Sometimes folks getting ready to launch their first website are distracted by minute details of the design. Commonly, this obsession with finding the "perfect shade of blue" delays the launch of the site and exhausts everyone's excitement for the project.
Suppose you just bought a new house. It's a beautiful, well-designed home... a dream. You hire an interior decorator and show them your current furnishings. They present you with several options for a color palette and you make your choice. But once the walls are painted, you see that red wall in the living room as just "too much." You could go back to the color palette choices and start over, or you could trust the interior decorator and bring your furnishings in. If the interior decorator you hired is good, you will find that the red on the wall is just perfect once the room is furnished. Don't enroll yourself in interior decorator self-training just to get a room painted. Hire people who's taste you know you can trust, and then trust them.
Of course you can, it's just a computer after all. The real question is, will you? To answer that question, you will need a trial period. You can elect to hire yourself or a member of your secretarial staff as your webmaster and, after a few months, evaluate the experience. In the mean time, however, your site will be live and viewed by potential clients. So it would be wise to have a professional webmaster at your immediate disposal via a retainer fee. This allows you to ensure your site will stay up-to-date (whether you or your staff follow through or not) at minimal cost.