Entrepreneur Magazine recently wrote an article titled The Cost of Quality which talks about the costs associated with designing, building, launching and managing your website.  It’s a very interesting article that emphasizes the fact that in order to be successful online, you cannot entrust your online presence to a cheap design template or the “dude next door” working out of his parent’s garage.  Of course it will cost you some money to get a website that drives your business goals and objectives, but it’s all about expectations and understanding what a quality website or application will take in effort and dollars spent to design, develop, and deliver.

What we’re talking about here is viewing your website as an investment, not just a marketing spend.  Your website is an asset that belongs on your balance sheet; revenue and expenses as related to it should be tracked.

Another point is that your website is just like any other asset you purchase; the old adage, “you get what you pay for” really rings true.  You can go to your friend’s cousin who lives in his parent’s garage to get a website for $1,000 but I can guarantee, you will pay for it later on.  We’ve been in the business for over 16 years and we’ve seen it happen time and time again.  Somebody went the cheap route and ended up with a website that didn’t work the way they wanted it or it broke down all the time or it flat out never got finished, because someone who didn’t know what they were doing promised them the farm at an impossibly cheap price.  Everyone knows that is just not reality – “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

I encourage you to read the article from Entrepreneur Magazine and think about your current web services provider: are they fulfilling your business goals and objectives (or even considering them for that matter), or do they take the time up front to ensure that you have a solid plan for accomplishing what you’re looking for, even if it costs a little more?  If you fit into the former description, I would suggest you take a look at a firm like ours and see if there really is a difference…my guess is that you will be pleasantly surprised.

I was in a meeting last week and someone made a comment that a website is not that big of a deal and really not much different than a yellow-page ad in the phone book.  I nearly leapt out of my chair!  Online marketing and yellow-page marketing are worlds apart!  Here are just a few points of refutation to this argument:

Measurement:    It’s tough to measure the success of a print piece other than the number of people who get it.  With a website, you can not only measure (using analytics tools) how many people come to it, but which pages they go to, how long they stay on each page, the path they took as they navigated through your website, where they came from, where they went to, and the list goes on and on and on.  The limits of understanding are endless!

Flexibility:  Once you’ve placed your print ad, you are stuck with it until the next round of printing (or in the case of yellow-pages, next year’s printing).  That typo is there until you reprint – read time and expense.  With a website that has even a basic content management system you can make changes any time you want, day or night.  Typo - Fixed.  New product - Added.  You get the idea.

Space: With a print ad you are limited to the size of the block.  With a website, not only do you have more space, but you can add more pages and sub-pages to make sure that the additional detail (and levels of detail) are available.  You can also link to other pages or websites where there’s even more content!

2D versus 3D:  Print is a 2-dimensional product – unless it’s a pop-up book.  Online is a multi-dimensional, interactive technology that allows one to drill-down into layers of information, link to other sites, launch applications, view videos, etc.  The ability for interaction is much greater!

Level of interactivity:  One can have real-time, immediate interaction with applications or other people via the web.  Have you tried Skype?  Played a multiplayer game online? Used instant chat?  Placed an order with Amazon?  Now remember how you interacted with that print piece?  It probably made you smile, or at most go to their website at a later time (notice how it still drives to a website?)!  But, did it make you “click” right then and there to make the purchase or fill out the contact form?  No, it didn’t, because print can’t.  A great deal of the impact the Web provides for businesses comes from the immediacy it allows.

Behavioral swing:  Because of all of the previous points – and probably some more that I didn’t mention – people are turning to the Web more and more.  While there may be a variety of very legitimate reasons to continue your print pieces, you cannot neglect the Web.

At BitWise, we don’t know the print business, we know the Web.  If you have print related needs, you should call someone else...but if you would like some help with your Web strategy, Web asset management, web development or anything Web related really, give us a call, I am fairly confident we can help.

The Foundation for Educational Choice is a not-for-profit founded on the ideals of famed economist Milton Freidman that promotes educational choice to any and all who seek it. By acting as a sort of repository for nationwide news relative to the subject, Ed. Choice has the ability to keep students, parents, teachers, legislatures, and everyone in between informed of new scholarship opportunities, legislation passed, or bills created that help students seek the schooling they desire.

While they are not solely web-based, a lot of their information is passed along via the web, and their current website was hindering them from effectively managing all the information that they had. In order to help them better educate the masses on educational choice, we here at BitWise Solutions developed a means to easily deliver research, news, legislation, and other documents that directly affect each state. Their content management system wasn’t ideal and made it difficult for the Foundation to easily edit content on their site, as well as provide organized content for their audiences. With a brand new content management system and research and legislation modules, they will now have complete control over what content is displayed on their site, and that will allow them to keep it up to date in the manner they need.

Now that the new site has launched, the efficiency and ease with which they can reach their audience will increase greatly, allowing them to more effectively serve the students and parents that subscribe to educational choice.