Websites

A website is a digital advertising medium: a set of pages a business puts online to give customers information and promote its products. Customers visit whenever they choose, so it works like an advert that never closes.

What a website can do well

A website has far more room than a poster or a radio advert, so it can give detailed information such as sizes, materials, prices and delivery options, and it can use multimedia content like photos, video and sound. A customer can study every product without asking a member of staff. Because the business controls the pages, they are available all the time and can be updated quickly — a wrong price can be corrected in minutes rather than reprinted.

A website can reach a global audience: anyone with a connection can view it, wherever they live. It can also support online sales by letting customers order and pay straight away, so the advert and the till are in the same place. Website traffic and responses can be measured: the business sees how many people visited, which pages they opened and how many clicked to buy. For example, a business selling printed t-shirts could see that 400 people viewed its size guide but only 15 ordered, so it rewrites the guide.

Drawbacks

• It needs promotion. A new site is one of millions, so the business must tell people its web address through other promotion, or nobody visits.
• Design, hosting and maintenance cost money and time. The pages must be designed, a host paid to keep the site online, and products and prices kept up to date.
• Customers need internet access and a device, which some people lack or find awkward.
• It may be ignored amid competition, so it must be easy to find, for instance by appearing high in search results.

When a website suits a business

It suits a business whose customers are online, that can drive them to the site through other promotion, and that wants to give detail or sell online. It is less suitable when the target audience has little internet access, or when the business cannot afford to keep the site promoted.