Running a small business takes a lot of work. Every small business owner would like to see their business in the best position to grow. One of the surest ways to invest in your small business is to have a website. There are still a lot of businesses that do not have a website for their customers. In today’s online world people expect to be able to do an online search and find your business, products & services there. If you want to take steps to improve your small business, this is one essential place to start. Here are a some benefits for your small business having a website.

Brand Recognition

The vast majority of customers today use the internet when they are searching for the product or service they need. By owning your own website, you will be able to extend the overall presence of your business, being both offline and online. There are a lot of small businesses that do a lot of their marketing online. Not only does this save money, but consumer studies show that this is more effective as well, since your potential customer is already online using their mobile device to search for you. Your website can provide all the information about your business, products and services you provide, how they can contact you, maybe even shop online for your products 24/7, you can offer helpful information, tips and hints and you can provide photos of your business, team, products and testimonials from happy customers. Your website is your representing your brand online.

More Traffic

Customers need to know that your business has a product or service to sell. Many customers are searching for quality products and services at a great price. However, it will be very hard to find your business if you don’t have a website. Building a quality website will drive traffic over time automatically to your website. This increases the amount of people who see the products or services that your small business offers. Always take the time to build a quality website, with quality information, in order to build up your web traffic.

Higher Profits

There are few things as impactful in marketing in today’s world as having a website. If you want higher profits in your business, it is important to invest in a website that will drive customers to sign up for your newsletter, call you for a quote, buy your products direct from your online store or call you for more information about the services you offer. Over a period of time, this will lead to higher profits in your business. Every small business owner wants to increase profits in their business over the long-term. Dollars spent investing in a quality website that is customer friendly will yield many more dollars for the business in the future. All small business owners must think about the long-term trajectory and vision of their business and seriously consider investing in a website.

Final Thoughts

There are many small businesses today that do not have a website. They either do not understand the importance of owning their own website and the benefits to their business or they think they do not have the money to invest in one. A good question to consider is what money are they losing to their competitors (who are online)?

The good news is that this is now easier than ever before to get a website. There are hundreds of web designers ready and able to build a quality website, most likely several right there in the area where they live. Anyone worried about building or coding a site can simply hire someone to do so. The price of building a website has gone down drastically in recent years.

Investing in a website will do several things for your business. Not only will it increase your brand recognition in the marketplace, but over time it will also drive traffic leading to potential increased sales, ultimately yielding higher profits for the business.

Home Based Business is actually a home website for the Home Based Business Network. According to the site the network is an actual community for individuals who loves to work from home and enjoys the freedom of being their own boss. It seems that the website is focused on helping individuals make their own home based business. If you visit the website, you will notice that it is designed like a community blog website included with a front page that does not have a sales pitch of a product.It seems that the website features a blog that includes guidelines on creating great sales page. Some features that you will notice in the site are easy ways to monetize a blog and some thoughts on the perfect home based business for different types of individuals. The site also includes a section for its members. You will notice that it is set up in a style like that of Facebook. It includes pictures of its members but the site firmly states that it is not a “social network for home based business.”The Home Based Business seems to offer their services for free. It seems that any individual can sign-up for free thus allowing them to create a profile for themselves and their home based business. It seems that members will have an opportunity to use the forum, blog, promote their business while sharing ideas with others, and watch and upload videos.If you do sign-up it seems that the site will allow you to the following:• Marketing & Advertising• Home Based Business Discussion• Book Reviews and Discussion• Non-Business Discussion• Advertising Your BusinessThe site seems to allow their visitors to visit its forums without signing up. Although, there are restrictions being enforced by the site and that is a not allowing ad placement in its forums except on its advertising forum. It seems that the site also creates special work at home groups. At the present, you will notice that there are 923 groups that one can choose from.If you do visit the site, there is a list of various products that are provided. The site allows its users to provide ratings for its products. It seems that there are various books being sold and it all links to Amazon.com. The site seems to provide a link to another website, which is owned by John Reese, and it is for affiliate marketers.All in all, Home Based Business is indeed a free site. It seems that you will be allowed to visit its forums but if you want to post something you will need to sign up. According to the site, you will be able to find helpful information on their site on how to make money online. But it is still wise to take things into consideration. The Internet is full of information. Some of which maybe factual and some are just hearsay. It is still up to you to make a choice.

Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.

If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.

Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.

For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.

No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.

There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.