Free articles and Article Submission

There are many sites on the internet (about 50 million active sites and over 100 million active Hostnames). However, many of these sites don’t serve their intended purpose, or in other words, haven’t reached their full potential.

For a business that isn’t an internet based business that could still survive without the internet or computers, what is the purpose of a website you may ask? Other than selling something online, there are still a number of good reasons for having a website: To alleviate menial tasks, to market yourself inexpensively or merely to provide basic and freely available information about your business.

There are really two types of websites, either selling something online or providing online information. These two categories can be expanded to a great extent, covering types of online products or services and various categories of information, e.g. brochure ware type information, blogs, forums, educational, etc. But for the purpose of this article I have contained it to just the two – therefore, as a visitor to a website, you either pay money for something or you get information that is publicly available.

I will be focusing on the second type of website, i.e. where someone has information that they want to share.

The first reason to have an informative type website that I’m going to discuss would be to alleviate menial tasks. Most businesses have many repetitive tasks that need to be performed on a daily basis. If you can highlight these tasks and categorise them and separate out the tasks that involve client interaction, you then have valuable information that can be incorporated into your site. A very basic example would be if you have a form that each of your clients need to fill out (for an application, registering details or whatever), you could make that form available on your website and direct your clients there. This will free up a staff members’ time that is required to explain the procedure over and over, it will also save on postage costs, paperwork, paper or the actual time spent emailing the form to your clients. This in turn would also save time spent on processing the information on the completed forms; it will already be in soft copy in the correct format that you chose on your website. Your imagination is the only boundary of what can be achieved on your website and to what level you want to take it to...

The next reason to having a website would be to market your business. If you’re in business, it means that you want people to know you exist, and with the internet at our disposal, why not use it? In my article “As a Small Business Owner, Why Do You Need Your Own Domain Name?” I explained the benefits of owning your own domain name. If you have registered your domain already, then you may as well publish a website and get some marketing out of it. Again, it is entirely up to you how successful you want to make it. There are many guidelines on the internet explaining how to improve your website’s exposure and attract more traffic/potential clients to your site.

Finally, if neither of the two reasons for having a website have grabbed your attention, then you should still do it anyway; even if it’s just to advertise your contact details. In the past, people would solely use directory listings to find business details, however these days, the internet has made searching for businesses, including your competition, very easy and widely used. Therefore it’s a good idea to have your contact details on a simple site. Even a copy of your business card published as a one page site is better than nothing.

Next time you’re looking for information from a specific business, see if the information you are looking for is or could be found on their website and explore the possibilities.

About the Author:
Gavin Payne has been involved in the Hosting industry for over 6 years working with global companies including AT&T, VISA, Peugeot, BMW, Motorola and many others. Today he's the managing director of NewSprout.com.au, an Australian website hosting and domain registration company that provides total web hosting solutions to business and personal clients. For more information visit http://www.newsprout.com.au