If you own any kind of business these days, you will need to have at least some kind of web presence. Not having a website is the equivalent of not having a phone. You simply have to have one, or people will see you as shady and unreliable. People like to check out things online before they decide to shop in new stores or pay for services provided by a fresh company. If you are nowhere to be found online, they will not take you as seriously as they would a company with a website.

Marketing is the other reason why you absolutely need to have an online presence. Online marketing is much cheaper than traditional marketing and offers better access to a wider audience. It can also be targeted to reach a specific target audience, no matter if you are targeting people of a certain age, vocation or something else entirely.

The fact is that building a website is getting progressively easier and less and less expensive. Sure, the price varies depending on the features you want it to have and how big it is, but for starters, you should at least have something basic. Here are a few options on how to set up a quick but reliable website.

Hiring a team of professionals

If you really need to have a high classed website right away, then you should probably hire a team of professional web designers to do this for you. This is probably the most expensive option but if the job is complicated, than it is best to play it safe and invest. Finding a web design team that is reliable can be hard to find but there are ways to do this. You can check out some websites that you like and ask the website owner to give you the contact for the designer team. Another option is going on E-Lance orODesk and finding a freelance designer team with a lot of successful jobs under their belt.

Learning WordPress

WordPress isn’t all that complicated to learn – at least on a basic level. It is very user friendly and even the code isn’t something that an average PC user can’t learn. If you have the patience, you can conquer the basics in about a month and be able to bring up and modify a premium template and build your own website. There are a lot of video tutorials out there that teach you how to use WordPress with constant instructions and explanations done by experienced, professional web designers. Even if you do not go for this option, it would be good to have at least the basic understanding of WordPress since you will need to modify things from time to time.

IM Creator

There is another option though. The creators of IM Creator claim that they can teach you how to build a website by watching a 60 second video. In fact, they claim that kids can build websites by using their platform. When I saw this, I had to check it out and I found that they live up to their claim. It is a drag and drop platform that requires absolutely no programming knowledge. I think changing your layout on MySpace was more difficult to do. There is also an option to choose one of their templates and then modify it to suit your needs and they are even categorized in different groups (business, blog, etc.). You can get your own domain name or register with a subdomain but I would recommend going for a domain that you fully own. It is much easier to pull off quality search engine optimization.

Social networks as a replacement

While I know plenty of businesses who only own social network accounts and believe that they are enough, I wouldn’t agree with this course of action. Social networks can be a great marketing tool but they can hardly match the potential of a website. In my opinion, pages on social networks have limited potential compared to a website with a well-optimized landing page, in the long run, pays off more to start with a small website and build it up.

Your course of action may depend on your financial capabilities but you have to remember that building a web presence that is successful is a steady process, not a onetime investment.