Time To Get Your Business a Web Site?

Is it time for your business to put up a Web site?

It's all the rage, of course; it seems like everybody's got one. That's not a good reason for you to go to the trouble, of course, but there are some good reasons.

For a small or medium-sized business, a Web site can be a useful complement. It can help spread your brand. It can make it easy for potential customers to find you, thus bringing in new business. It can even give you the chance to experiment with new products and service offerings without disrupting your main business. At a minimum, a business Web site is like a virtual Yellow Pages advertisement for yourself.

Now, if your business, like ours here at AllBusiness.com, uses the Web as a major feature of its business, then you'll invest a lot in it: You'll buy big expensive server computers and Web-site hosting software, and hire experts to set them all up; you'll buy access to the Internet and set that up; then your people will custom-design the Web site itself.

We do that; but then, we're a Web business, so we have to. We've got literally dozens of programmers and technicians and Web designers and production folks, not to mention editors, writers and outside contributors, marketing experts, search-engine optimization gurus, and support staff.

You're probably not going to go that route, right? (If you need further convincing, take a look at our article, "Why Can't You Host Your Own Web Site?".)