The importance of an internet presence

As the internet becomes more and more popular, the importance of a successfully established and managed internet presence is usually self evident. Studies over the last few years reveal that the internet has already surpassed newspapers and yellow pages for information and research regarding companies, products, and services. 70% of US adults use the internet as an information source when shopping locally for products and services, and 63% of those who make online purchases use search engines to research offerings before making a purchase. If your website is not easily to be found on the internet where potential customers, clients, and prospects are already looking, you simply do not exist to the largest and most cost effective source of business you may have. The difference between a website with practically no sales and visits, and a flourishing website that generates significant traffic and profit ultimately lies in promotion and marketing. In fact, many websites even get away with slow, unattractive, and unimpressive content simply due to their online visibility. Of course, they won't be performing as well as they could. A study by Oneupweb shows that as many as 88% of websites are not optimized for marketing and promotion! If a company gets, say, 50 visitors a day to an intelligently developed website – they should expect some of these 50 visitors to make a purchase or request whatever the site may offer. Now, if a company starts to get hundreds or thousands of visitors to their website every day, even a poorly developed website lacking many of the above points will probably outperform the website with 50 visitors a day. Traffic, generated by online marketing and promotion is the most important aspect of a successful and profitable web presence.

If you build it, will they come?

With billions of websites on the internet, and new pages being added at an estimated rate of 7.3 million every day, how will one more website make a difference? There are many factors that largely affect the performance and results of a website:

• Website appearance and general image
  
• Website load time – the time it takes users to see what they are looking for
  
• Navigational Structure of the web site
  
• Web site content and it's presentation
  
• Conversion Allowance - The ability to allow people to find what you offer and obtain it
  
• Cross browser/platform compatibility – ensuring every visitor has the same experience

But, even the most beautifully, strategically, and intelligently designed web site will not make a bit of difference if no one knows about it and no one can find it.

Obtaining a professional and profitable Web Presence

With 7.3 million new pages appearing online every day, it's obvious a lot of people are creating content for the web. Everyone from middle-school students to college professors are creating and uploading websites, and the quality of web content varies as largely as it's authors. To make matters worse, a website seemingly perfectly developed to an untrained eye commonly contains one or many elements which will inevitably lead to the failure of any significant success. Once a company realizes the potential a strategic online presence can make, the next step is planning how to go about it. Completely ensuring a professionally developed website and internet presence is extremely difficult for the average business owner, as determining which factors are most important to the projects success and therefore hiring the right company is often practically impossible. Website Development, online marketing and internet promotion techniques have been steadily and rapidly evolving since the boom of the internet. Rapid changes in technology and increasing technical requirements make staying on top of website development increasingly more difficult. Furthermore, search engine marketing and online promotion of websites changes so frequently that they may never be taught in a course room to any affect.



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