We are glad that you are ready to grow your business. Really, who wouldn’t want more sales, increased profits and a larger customer base? Ok, take a brief moment and think about your current online web presence. How would you evaluate it? (Come on now, no cheating, you are only giving answers in your head anyway.)

How does my website benefit or assist my business today?

How do people find out about my organization’s website?

Does my website look professional and does it properly reflect and convey the image that I want for my organization?

Do I have control over the content on my website?

If I had a sales person that wasn’t bringing in the business would I continue to keep them on the payroll? Ergo, is my website generating its fair share of new sales opportunities?

Well, how did you - and your website - do? Are you happy with the answers you gave? If so, then congratulations, you have a website and web presence that is working well for you and your organization. If, however, the answers that you gave aren’t exactly what you want them to be, don’t worry you... are not alone. Please read on and see what other small business owners around Naperville, IL had to say when we asked them similar questions about the need for a new or updated website and why they aren't working on one right now.

“The economy is bad so I’ll put off working on my website right now in hopes that things get better and we can then find some time and money to do something.”

By creating or updating your website now it could help to ease the effects of a slowing economy on your business. How much is your average ticket or sale? If you had a few more of those a month from new prospects that your website generated for you, wouldn’t that help to offset any website development costs and take some of the strain of the economy off your business?

“We are busy right now and although we know we need a new website, we just can’t find the time to get started on a new project right now.”

It is great that you are busy now, but you do you have a natural cycle of highs and lows in terms of sales in your business? It is a good idea to get a website up and working for you now so that when sales begin to drop off a bit you already have a mechanism in place that will help you capture additional business. It takes some time for your website to become established on the search engines so the sooner you get out there, the sooner it can be begin working for you.

“Sales are down and we are just trying to get by, so when things pick up we will be able to think about a new website.”

If sales are down then you need to be looking at every possible opportunity to get things back on track. A website that isn’t generating business for you isn’t doing anyone any good. Sometimes it takes a new project or idea to jumpstart your business. Use this downtime to work hard on your message and be sure that people searching for your product or service on the web are seeing that message.

Of course we have also heard the old tried and true sentiments like, “change is hard and scary," or that "breaking old habits is difficult," or the ever popular, "we’ve always done it this way so why should we change now?”

Those just sound like excuses to us. Anyone can throw around a few clichés so here goes… Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Challenge yourself and get outside your comfort zone. It takes money to make money. Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today. And of course the popular, you can’t move forward if you are standing still. The bottom line is, you need to have confidence in your business. When we are confident we make solid business decisions, take necessary risks and achieve the things that we need to be successful.

Finally there is my all-time favorite, "well our website is out there and it really doesn’t do much for our business anyway, so we are happy with what we have and we are just gonna leave it alone right now…"

WHAT, are you kidding me? You have something out on the Internet for everyone to see, basically the first impression for anyone who is looking at your business online. If you website isn’t professional looking then what is to say to them that the work that you do or product that you provide will be professional? We have all heard that you only have three seconds to make a first impression the first time you meet someone. How many seconds do you think people give your website?

Click here for the answer found in a recent study, and it is shorter than you think…