| Having an online presence creates a solid foundation for conveying
information and your company image to others.
The Internet is affecting all businesses, including those where
traditionally technology hasn’t been a priority. More and
more computer-literate employees are entering the workplace. These
people will shortly become the majority.
Updates
Updating your website is important and need not be expensive or
time-consuming.
Think of your website not only as an information source but as
a communications tool. Information passed between you and your client
by other means could just as easily be transmitted via the web.
When thinking in terms of your next website update why not try to
come up with a feature that could be placed online to encourage
clients to make more use of the site. This could be in the form
of a small tool, application, or guides and manuals.
The web is by far the most cost effective method of publishing
available to small businesses and allows more customer service opportunities
than any brochure.
Update Calendar
A website is an organic system that allows rapid reactions and proactivity.
An update calendar can provide a great planning tool for creating
a strategy and an evolving website. Simply break the year into months
and plan your proactive updates for the coming six or twelve months.
The great benefit of this is that it has greater structure than
a simple wish list and is flexible enough to add to and modify as
your ideas and confidence develop.
Pay as you go maintenance
As a small business it is essential to have maintenance on hand
when required but very often the contracts that provide this service
are constrictive. They tend to offer a pre-paid service for a set
period of time regardless of whether any help has been, or will
ever be required. So, as an alternative approach to this problem,
a provision similar to the “pay as you go” mobile phone
top-up is available. With these pay as you go updates small businesses
have the best of both worlds. Simply purchase blocks of hours to
be used when needed and then when low on credit, top-up.
Pay as you go maintenance modules can be used against any type of
website update because you are buying actual time to be used freely
with your accounts. You will find that this method of updating fits
in well with any plans laid out in your update calendars and gives
the flexibility to react to changes in your industry quickly.
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