Guest Post: The Benefits of having a Web Site in a Recession

January 12, 2009 · Posted in Uncategorized · Posted by IIA

The following guest post is written by Leon Quinn of Reverb Studios Multimedia & Web Design. Reverb Studios recently rejoined the IIA which I was really glad to see. Leon Quinn, the company owner, had been on my radar through twitter and had made some valuable input to the Social Media Working Group’s recent blogging workshop through the live twittering (You’ll hear me passing on his inputs in the podcast where I mistakenly say that he is based in Co. Clare when he’s actually in lovely Leitrim – my bad!)

I ask all new members what prompted them to join the IIA. Leon told me that “Good key worded anchor links from a site like the IIA’s with a Google page rank of 6/10 and Alexa rank of 135,562 should help promote my web site so I guess you could say I’m mainly using the IIA site for link backs but in return you should get some useful content via my 2 blogs through your excellent RSS feature.”

Over to Leon:

The dominant mood in the current economic climate amongst the general public and businesses especially is to cut costs, save money and look for deals. Bearing this in mind, and if you run a business looking to increase your sales leads, now might be a good time to look at your marketing methods and spend.

‘Old fashioned’ marketing methods such as Print, Radio, TV, Brochures, etc.. remain effective at least in a local context but they also remain very expensive. If you are a business manager who has managed to avoid going down the online route to find leads until now then you should realise that according to recent statistics more and more people are using the internet to find services and purchase products online and you may not be able to afford to ignore this fact for much longer.

Web Design companies, if they have morals! will realise that companies may turn to the net in the current crisis to service their sales needs and therefore will hopefully lower their prices in the face of greater competition so hiring a web development company should no longer break the bank like it used to.

So what are the benefits of having a web presence over traditional marketing means?

- The web has a much greater reach, anyone with a PC and internet connection, anywhere in the world can find your site and potentially do business with you.
- The web never sleeps. Your website will not keep normal business hours but will continue to sell your services 24/7.
- It’s easier and quicker to find a product or service on the web thanks to excellent search engines such as Google therefore people will use this method to find companies much more.
- You can say more and sell yourself better on a web site than any other media. Consider the cost of an ad in something like the yellow pages and what you get for that price as opposed to a web site on which you can have text, photos, audio, video, news and as many pages as you like!
- The ongoing cost of a web site is quite small compared to other media. If you are managing the site yourself then the only repetitive costs will be your domain name and hosting and these should be reasonable.
- Spending money on something like Google Adwords to get people to your site is a much more efficient way of spending your marketing budget and you can monitor the effects of a campaign much more closely.
- You can use Google Analytics on your web site for free and gain very useful information about the type of people visiting your site and what they looked at most while there. This information can allow you to optimise your site to maximise the amount of people who actually contact you and give you a valuable sales lead.

Article by Leon Quinn

Reverb Studios Multimedia Design, Leitrim

www.ReverbStudios.ie

Tags: Guest Blogger, members, new members, promotion, recession, SEO

Comments

16 Responses to “Guest Post: The Benefits of having a Web Site in a Recession”

enerstar on January 12th, 2009 5:26 pm

Extremely useful article especially the part about Google Adwords and Google Analytics.
Thank you !

Enerstar.ie team
facundo on January 14th, 2009 9:46 pm

Very useful article. I would also say to companies that don’t have an online presence yet that their website will definitely RE-ASSURE their prospects in their buying decision process. This cannot be ignored if you want to increase your customer base!
Roseanne Smith on January 15th, 2009 4:12 pm

Thanks for your input Facundo. I think what you say true. I know I would take a company’s web presence into consideration when approaching them as a customer. I like your use of the word “reassure” as well because it underlines the fact that a company does not have to have an all-singing, all-dancing website but something that is well designed and professional looking with up-to-date information and contact details is always reassuring.

Roseanne
Ecommerce Website Design on January 19th, 2009 5:46 pm

Great post and some good points regarding Google Analytics and Adwords. Would have been worth mentioning Google Website Optimizer though
Leon Quinn on January 22nd, 2009 12:11 am

@ facundo

I always say that just having a site (provided its not so bad as to be a liability!) is like a quality mark for a company these days. Its expected too.

@ Ecommerce Website Design

Google website optimizer might be a bit much for the average Joe?

@Roseanne

Please add the subscribe to comments plugin, it will promote more comments and discussion!? – http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/
Roseanne Smith on January 22nd, 2009 10:01 am

Thanks Leon. I’m on the case with the subscribe to comments. Good to get a nudge though – thanks!
Roseanne
The Benefits of Having a Website in a Recession at Reverb Studios Blog on January 27th, 2009 3:31 pm

[...] at – http://blog.iia.ie/2009/guest-post-the-benefits-of-having-a-web-site-in-a-recession/ « Optimise Your Website New Baby Girl! [...]
Web design london on February 2nd, 2009 3:49 pm

Hi, really useful article for promoting a reason to have a Web Site, although im not convinced re the statement of Web Design companies having morals lowering their prices. A Web Development company worth their salt should not be putting their clients in a position of breaking the bank in the first place and i feel if they do this they will not be in business for very long anyway. There is also the point of, if it costs you peanuts you probably have monkeys working for you, surely it is more about value for money.
Google Adwords are value for money as we in the Web Design business constantly keep trying to tell our customers however, Google Maps is a very lucrative way to spend your time during slow periods and link building, although time consuming as we all know has its rewards.
Adwords Help on February 5th, 2009 2:02 am

The fastest way to page one of Google is Adwords. There is a learning curve but many marketers have had great success. And many have also lost their shirt. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your success wi th Adwords.
Google Shadow on February 7th, 2009 1:18 am

All the people I know who are struggling right now with the “outside” economy think that having a website is “dorky” or “weird” but when I tell them how much I make off each one, they feel dumb and want to learn how to start building websites as well.
Article Services on February 9th, 2009 1:50 pm

well, nice try, but I don’t really agree.

although moving from offline advertisement to online advertisement is usually much more interesting any time, spending your money on adwords is in fact not the best way to spend your money, seo is much more effective, but it takes time.

so, sure you can get a site up and running rather fast and traffic from adwords is almost instant, but it’s a never ending expense, seo is much cheaper in the long run … but; if you target a bit serious keyword, it will take at least 6 months to rank by that time the recession might already be over …

but then again; when times are tought a lot of people tend to cut their market budget, which is of course a deadly mistake; you should trow everything you got to marketing right now, so in that sense I do agree that online marketing is now more important then ever

let me add this; I always find it hard to believe that there are still lots of companies out there without a web site …

cheers,

Michiel
Kevin Sandridge on April 23rd, 2009 3:40 am

We’re finally reaching a point where those who are not actively using blogs, social media, etc. to market their products will soon fade away.

Adwords is one area where I need to put a bit more focus. We’ll get there!
cerl on July 13th, 2009 9:18 pm

Great article have tried google adwords on the basis of this and have had some limited results
Thanks
Commercialenergyratings.ie team
Iflexion on August 7th, 2009 3:19 pm

I’d like to note that Internet sphere (web sphere) is the only one which stay more or less stable during the recession.
Colorado Marketing on August 23rd, 2011 7:15 am

I agree. The number one draw for me is the low overhead costs. Let’s face it, if you are in retail you can waste a lot of money on a non-frequented storefront, whole on the web you are open 24/7 and to the world. When you consider that shipping costs are always passed on to the buyer it’s almost like having a store at no cost!
Remove bad reviews on May 22nd, 2012 10:05 am

A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address known as a Uniform Resource Locator. Thanks.