The beginning of a new year is a great time to set goals for your business and decide where you are going to spend some of your marketing dollars. If you don’t have a website for your business or your website is outdated, make 2010 the year you stand out online.

If you aren’t convinced that now is the right time to start thinking about your website, consider the following reasons:

1. Customers and potential customers need to know where to find you.

Every business can benefit from having an effective website. That being said, not every business needs the same type of site and not every business needs a large and expensive site. Many small businesses simply need a few pages with their phone number, address and directions to their location. This is going to allow new and returning customers to access the information they need about your business whenever they need it just by searching you out in a search engine such as Google.

2. Your customers are already shopping (and pre-shopping) online.

According to Forrester Research, online sales in the US are expected to reach $331 billion in 2010. This market is only expected to grow.

There will always be a place for brick and mortar retail shops, but e-commerce is something you shouldn’t ignore or resist. Not included in the $331 billion figure are consumers who went online to research, price, and comparison shop products before going into a traditional store to actually make their purchase. So even if you aren’t ready to sell online, a website can motivate your customer to buy from you.

Another promising statistic from Forrester states that although the economic downturn has impacted overall sales in nearly all areas, the online sales growth rate has diminished only slightly and continues its upward trend by as much as 13% per year.

3. The sooner you get online, the sooner you will start making new customers online. 

Building a superior online presence takes time. Having a website built can be quick, but getting into the search engines and ranking well for the keywords you want can take months, even years for competitive terms. The good news is that you can get started right now by going to Godaddy.com and buying the domain name (that’s your .com or .net address). The domain will only cost you about $10/year. The earlier you get started, the sooner you can start getting results.

If you are serious about making 2010 your year to bring your business online, be sure to attend the January Market and visit http://www.goebelmedia.com for more information.

Goebel Media Group has an exciting new client– Christopher Macken Concepts. We are thrilled to be managing his web presence and much of his marketing. The current site is a work in progress and will be added to in the near future. More about this exciting client to come…

About Christopher Macken
Christopher Macken has taken the beauty industry by storm. Blazing a path through Miami, Orlando, and much of the southeast, his long list of distinguished clients travel from all over and he travels to them, allowing everyone to experience having their own personal, celebrity stylist.  Having trained under some of the best in the business and boasting a lustrous decade long career, Christopher has developed his own brand of  high end, high quality cosmetics and skin care products.

Goebel Media Group designed a new website for Dr. Faull Trover, located in Covington GA. Here are some of the highlights of the website:
- Flash header
- Administrative backend that allows them to update content for parents
- Fun, colorful site design that shows he is a pediatric doctor.

About Dr Trover:
Dr. Trover attended Tulane University for his undergraduate degree. He attended medical school at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.

Dr. Trover sees patients from birth to age 21 or completion of college.

Dr. Trover habla español.

Visit the site at http://www.drtrover.com

Free website and blog services like Blogger and Free Webs are attractive to business owners because they are free and easy to use.  While these services are great tools for personal use, using them for business blogging or for your business website can be a mistake.  Here are a few reasons to hire a professional to create your web presence:

1) Free blogs/sites tend not to rank as well in search engines.
There are exceptions, but frees sites usually don’t rank as well in search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Free sites and blogs are popular as hobby sites and often have poor content and are never updated. Because of this, search engines do not give these pages a high rank.

2) Free websites and blogs make your business seem less trustworthy.
There is a notion that free sites and blogs seem less authentic and less professional. Spammers and scammers use free website services almost exclusively; I wouldn’t want my business grouped with them!

3) Free sites and blogs often look cheap and have an unoriginal site design.
Again, there are exceptions. However, for the most part, free sites and blogs do not look as sharp as professional websites. First impressions count; why would you want your business represented with a poor looking, unoriginal design? Another problem with these sites is that they are not easily customized to fit the needs of your business.

4) Most of these services do not come with a domain name.
Your URL for a free site is usually just a subdomain of the service (ex. example.blogspot.com).  If you do get your own domain (www.example.com) through the service, you are giving them control over the domain. And if you decide to get a professional website in the future, it may be difficult or costly to get the domain back under your control.

5) These services often put ads on your site.
Many free services run their ads on your website. This can make your business look really unprofessional.  If someone is going to make money off your website, it should be you.

6) Some services are unreliable.
One of the most popular free website services (Geocities) is closing on October 26th 2009.  It highlights a good point that these services are free, and some have a hard time making money.  Also, because they are free, they have less obligation to their users to stay open.

Don’t get me wrong– free website and blog services can be a great thing.  They make creating a website or blog possible for anyone, which is great.  But if you’re serious about your website and your business, it’s a good idea to make an investment in some professional web design services.