An Analogy

Having an office in a high rise building is an extremely accurate analogy of website presence management for a number of reasons.


Visibility

An office in a high rise cannot easily be found by people passing by on the street. Effective signage is difficult and expensive to come by unless you are a large player or own the building. A website is difficult to find among the millions of other websites on the Internet. Unless you are a large company that has a branded name you will have to make sure your customers find you where they go to find your services.




Customer Experience

Once the customer enters an office in a high rise or your website they will have an “experience”. The lobby, waiting area, conference room, magazines available on the coffee tables are all carefully designed in a traditional office. Generally, receptionists or secretaries are instructed on how to interact with a customer, offering a cup of coffee / tea, “may I help you”, please have a seat etc. are often carefully planned and thought out. It is even more critical for a website to have a comprehensive user experience planned because a visitor to a website decides in less than ten seconds whether or not to stay.


Marketing

Marketing can be a very difficult and time consuming effort on the Internet. The upside is that the Internet provides access to millions of potential customers world wide. The downside is that the marketplace is extremely crowded, millions of new web sites come online every day. Getting noticed can be challenging.


Costs

Fortunately there is one big difference between a high rise office and a web site… rents are much lower on the Internet. Depending on the amount of information served and the size of the website it will generally cost between $10 and $100 a month.