Your website = your first impression.

I recently meet with a prospective client for the first time to discuss their ideas for a new website. Before meeting with them I fully engrossed myself with their website, understanding their business, reading bios, case studies, etc. My first impression was that they were a reputable small, maybe 10-15 employee firm. To my shock and almost downfall, they were a much larger firm occupying two floors of a massive corporate building. Needless to say, I thought I was in the wrong place.

In the example above, this client had a very big problem. Their business is very people orientated, and if it looks like they have only employees, then it looks like they can only handle small accounts or fewer of the big ones anyways.

A good website will enable your sales people, account reps, and marketing efforts to get the attention they deserve. Imagine you are a company with a hundred employees and multiple locations, and your walking up to a Fortune 500 company and trying to sell them $500,000 in goods or services. But the decision maker that you are meeting with already reviewed your website and thinks you are a small shop with half a dozen employees. Imagine his concern with handing you a $500,000 purchase order.

The ideal situation is that your website not only makes your company appear larger, but more capable and more experienced to handle the ideal target clients you want to pursue.