by Art Young

Created on: November 06, 2009

From the largest, international conglomerate to the corner flower store, just about every business has a website. Many of these sites have little impact on the success of the businesses that own them, but most enterprises feel that having a website is as important as having a company phone number or a business card.

With the ubiquity of websites, the cost of the technology to build and maintain a site is extremely low. In fact, some websites cost less to build and maintain than what many companies would budget for basic telephone service.

If a business owner is contemplating building a website, there are several factors to take into consideration before joining the digital revolution.

What is the Business Objective of a Website?

As counter-intuitive as it seems, many business owners forget that there should be logical, business reasons for having a company website. It's not enough to say, "Well, every other business has one, we need one!" No matter how inexpensive it is to build and manage a website, it is a waste of the company's time and resources to have a site that has no real benefit to the business.

There are several worthwhile business objectives that can be met by a website. When these are understood, the design and functionality of the site can be appropriately configured.

For example, a company can use its site as a type of brochure on the Internet. Instead of investing funds in printing sales brochures or product collateral, digital images and product information can be featured on the company website. Over time, this can result in the savings of thousands of dollars in printing costs.

With some inexpensive, commerce-oriented programming, a company website can also enable the company to make sales transactions. Making the company's products available for purchase to customers on a "24/7" basis can be an excellent objective of its website.

A Memorable Address Can be Extremely Valuable

After the decision is made to build a website, one of the first orders of business is to find an "address" for the site. Just like the company name, logo, signage or physical location, the website's domain, or address is an important part of the company's brand.

Securing a memorable "Uniform Resource Locator" or URL is more difficult than a business owner might think. Because there are millions of websites, most, but not all of the clever addresses, are owned by someone else. It's safe to say that www.realestate.com or www.thecuteboutique.com is in the hands of someone

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