Storm Code

Getting the best possible service for your money if very important. However, thinking that the lowest price means the best deal will land you nothing but headaches. One thing you should ask yourself before taking the lowest price service or product is why is it so cheap? Let me use Linux as an example. You can download many different versions of the operating system for free, and you wouldn’t be doing anything illegal! It is offered for free by the various companies that develop the builds. However, when you encounter a problem you have no support system to turn to for answers.

If you plan on paying $10 a month for web hosting, you have to ask yourself, when I have a problem, who is going to help me? Is it going to be someone that is knowledgeable and invested in my company? Or is it more likely going to be someone in a call center over-seas who may or may not be interested in actually helping you. In this business, like most others, you get what you pay for. So while the cheapest product or service may benefit you in the short term, that all goes out the window when you have to spend hours of your time trying to get someone who does not understand your business to help you fix a problem.

Another real world example would be car insurance. If you buy a brand new car do you purchase an insurance policy that only covers the bare minimum, or do you purchase comprehensive insurance so that if something were to happen you have the peace of mind of knowing that you are totally covered. Do you go with a company that’s cheaper, or a company that you know is going to make filing a claim as easy as possible if an accident does happen?

No one wants to be in a position where the company they have been paying is doing everything in their power to get out of helping. That’s why at Storm Code no matter what product or service you purchase from us, you get a Project Manager that you can call or e-mail personally. Someone that knows your business and your name. Someone who wants to help you. Someone invested.

Have you ever been to a website several times over a period of time and not noticed any changes in the content? What did you think about that website and the company or person(s) that it represents? Would you go into work everyday wearing the same clothes? Would you answer the same question in exactly the same way and carry on the same dialog with peers and potential clients regardless of the situation or present state of affairs? If you did, do you think that would make you more or less productive? More or less interesting? More or less likely to secure that client, close that deal, or gain repeat business?

A static website with nothing new gives the user no reason to return, aside from referencing data that they already know exists. It offers no insight into your business or life. In some minds it might even be seen as lazy or boring. Surely if you went into every business meeting with the same attitude and the same canned responses to questions, you would not be successful. Being adaptable and offering new, useful, or interesting information is something we all do on a daily basis. It’s what drives business through our doors.

In a world where more and more business is being conducted on the web, the same strategies that apply to real world business can be applied to the web presence of a business. A dynamic website gives the user, be it a client, employee, or potential sale a reason to keep coming back to visit with each visit being another potential sale.

A dynamic website does not need to be a drain on your time or your resources if it is setup properly. Content can be setup before hand and automatically made visible on a certain date. Features and functionality can be created that add a dynamic look and feel to your website without actually requiring you do any additional work.

As an example let me use a Real Estate Brokerage. Many Brokerages have found that storing their information in a web based database accessible through an easy to use back-end management system increases productivity as well as the availability of information. Instead of endless printouts of listing sheets and folders (virtual or physical) containing pictures of properties, you have a central point at which to enter and maintain the data. Any Agent can access the system and view compiled property information. Why stop with just allowing employees access to the information? What about the clients? By adding a search for properties page to the front-end of the website (the area of the website accessible by clients or potential clients) you create a dynamic website that requires nothing more then business as usual to keep it updated.

The information being made available to the web surfer is just a scaled down version of what is already available to Agents through the back-end system. Now the Brokerage has a dynamic website with properties that are updated at the same instant an Agent enters or updates them in the back-end database. It’s killing two birds with one stone and creating a website that users will want to come back to in the future.

This is just one example of how to take a static website and turn it into an ever changing marketing tool to drive in business.