Small Business Catalogue Web Sites
A step up from a brochure website, a catalogue website gives you the opportunity
to display a wide range of products and prices - just like a print catalogue.
With a print catalogue, you just know most of them will end up in the recycle
bin without being read. Your printed catalogue is shoved into letterboxes
with a heap of others, annoying many of the recipients.
A web catalogue, on the other hand, if it is properly prepared, will mostly be
looked at by people who have searched for just the product you are offering.
It costs no more for it to be viewed by a hundred or a hundred thousand.
Just like a print catalogue, a website catalogue is meant to service a "bricks
and mortar" business; meaning that you have a shop to which you hope the
customers will come after finding advertised what they want. The next step
up from this is an e-commerce site, which has an electronic shopping basket, and
goods are paid for online. This option is much more costly of course.
With an online catalogue, one of the greatest benefits is that changes can be
made very rapidly. If your new line comes in today, you can have it
advertised on the internet tomorrow on your very own website. It really
does pay to keep your catalogue up to date.
Now that brings me to the subject of those websites which act as directories for
other businesses. Typically, they rank highly for the product a potential
customer is searching for, but when you go into the website, you are confronted
by a bewildering array of options and categories. Make your business stand
out with a properly optimised
catalogue website. A couple of our businesses, past and present, are
advertised on online directories to which we did not subscribe, and the details
are out-of-date.
I can help you to get a suitable domain name if you don't already have one.
It is very important to choose a good domain name for any website, and then to
find out if it is still available. Sometimes it seems to take ages just to
find a name that is not taken these days.
I will set up the email accounts and hosting for your web catalogue.
You must avoid falling for so-called "free
website hosting", among other things, that would detract greatly from your
credibility. Businesses with free hosting look like "fly-by-nighters".
Contact by your potential customers will be either by phone or email form.
The use of a simple form stops email harvesting to some degree, and then a bit
of extra code weeds out those nuisances who put your email address onto an
automatic spammer.
The Internet provides a cost effective means of marketing your business online
24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
If you are in the Brisbane area, and are considering a new small business website or want to be found on the internet, then
contact me, John May.