Is the Cost of Your Website Just One
More Expense You
Begrudge?
Many people look at their websites as an extra "expense." This may be one of
the reasons the performance of so many websites falls short of their owners'
expectations.
The cost of operating a website and creating satisfactory performance is a
marketing function, not simply a matter of having a website or a web presence
like everybody else. Once you've spent hundreds or thousands of dollars for
professional design and backend development, the marketing should begin. At this
point and throughout the process, it's wise to view the expense of marketing as
a legitimate, tax deductible advertising expense for the business. It's no
different than having an ad designed and placed in the Yellow Pages or your
Chamber of Commerce newsletter; or paying for a listing in the directory of a
trade organization.
Consider these marketing expenses:
Web Hosting = Technically, this is a
utility expense, but because it supports your online marketing, could be
considered a marketing expense.
Web Design = You could get your nephew to
develop your site, but does he know what attracts search engine robots? Does
he have graphic design expertise? Or, if he is a designer, is he also a
programmer? The cost to create a professional online image, just like the cost
to design and produce a brochure for your business, is a marketing expense.
Search Engine Optimization = How well your site's key pages are
optimized with focused keywords and phrases may well determine how many new
customers you get through your site. That is one of the goals of the site,
right? SEO is definitely a marketing expense.
Business owners are evolving in their thinking about the "expense" of a
website as they realize the enormous potential of a medium that has already
proved its value many times over. From now forward, it's a matter of maximizing
the marketing opportunity the website offers.
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Permission to reprint this article is granted
if attribution is included as follows or similar:
Copyright Wordpix Solutions and author Peggi Ridgway,
www.wordpix.com
