Why Your Website Is An Asset For You & Customers

It’s A Matter Of Attitude And Implementation

Your website is an asset. A business asset. It’s the single online property you can own and control. Your most potent piece of real estate when it comes to your online business presence. It’s your home, base-camp, hub, anchor. It’s where you can create the most direct online chain to supplying your customers with what they need. The one self-owned container you’ve got. The only one that offers you the complete package; an indisputable golden opportunity to communicate and demonstrate your brand identity to yourself, your visitors, customers, potential employees, followers, prospects and leads. And to serve. 

Considering this, it should be easy to see that your website is a business asset that deserves and requires the same import and respect that any other of your business assets demand. Much the same way you would care for a brick and mortar location you occupy for your business or other (fixed and current) tangible (hard) assets such as property or land that you own or certain financial assets, equipment, inventory etc.

See Your Website For What It Is

The website development and design process isn’t one that will merely tie you to an abstracted online translation of who you are, encasing your name, services, mission and other content into a viewable, clickable static container. Or even merely a marketing tool, interactive or not.

For many businesses and organizations, it’s an absence of Asset-Regard that imposes the risk of an unfortunate lack of direction and intent for customer use. Think about it. Having a laissez-faire attitude about your website, means you are not valuing it to the breadth and depth of its potential. And that means you are not only possibly selling yourself short but your customer as well. What are you really giving them, then?

[Tweet “If your site is an asset for the business, then it’s an asset for your customer as well.”]

There’s not much that’s more important than that.

In accounting terms, a small business website asset would be defined as an intangible asset (non-physical in the sense that it cannot be touched):

 “…an asset is an economic resource. Anything tangible or intangible that is capable of being owned or controlled to produce value and that is held to have positive economic value is considered an asset. 

…Intangible assets are nonphysical resources and rights that have a value to the firm because they give the firm some kind of advantage in the market place.”

“Intangible assets are considered the goods of immaterial nature:

• The science of knowing what to do
• Our relations with the clients
• Our operative processes
• The technology of information and databases.
• Capacities, abilities and innovations of the employers.

…The intangible assets are the most important sources of the organization that grant competitive advantages to other companies. The organization that has an excellent operative process, knows their segment in the market and possess the knowledge to develop a unique product, and has the ability of motivating their employees, will have a guaranteed success.”

How Do We Miss The Mark?

Once you are engrossed at the micro level process of developing your business website, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. Your memory and initial intent may become obscured. That’s especially true if you haven’t identified the forest in the first place. What you may not fully realize and really ought to consider, is that this is not a project that you will start and then finish and be able to walk away from when you think it’s done. No asset deserves that cursory treatment.

Developing a website is the same as constructing and investing in any asset that needs to be tended to and interacted with. For as long as it’s yours not just until you conclude the acquisition or in the case of your website, until it is launched.

[Tweet “The launch of your website is really only the beginning.”]

This Can Be Perceived As A Pressure Or As A Freedom

There are no magic buttons to push and no magic bullet to speed you towards achieving one of the most important business assets you will ever construct and possess for your organization online. It takes not only a financial investment but also one of time and sustained attention.

Please, No Deer In The Headlights

I don’t mean to prod you into any sort of performance paralysis. It’s rare for me to talk the way I’m about to because it seems like such a given.

However, maybe this needs saying-

Why do you suppose we hear silent moans in the room and can feel the collective drop in mood, the discomfort when we talk to you about ensuring that your business has a better than just-decent-website? That it takes concentration, an internal awareness of your organization and a knowledge of who your customers are and what they need from you.

We see that it sometimes creates anxiety and overwhelm, worry about the details and loss of the sight of the big, exciting picture. A sputter and stall at the realization of your lack of technical expertise and ability to be aware of and understand all the pieces. Concern about cost and where, how to find the time to execute. And how to choose the professionals you’ll hire to get the thing done. And what to do next at each step phase.

Pretty much everyone accepts the need for a website in business by now. It’s rarely a question anymore. Even for businesses and organizations that operate solely offline, there is a strong likelihood that customers, members, donors and clients are in the habit of validating your legitimacy by looking for you online. If you aren’t there, or are only found on social media you stand to lose their confidence. If you are represented in poor fashion, with an under par website property, you’ve potentially done even more damage.

[Tweet “I encourage you to put those worries aside in order to charge ahead wisely.”]

You’ll be driven to do that once you perceive that the worries are dictating your ability to take action the right way. Granted, it’s not like everyone reacts with trepidation. There are those who are simply thrilled at the chance to see the different angles and conceive fresh ones; the opportunities that are presented by thinking of their web property as an asset. When you’re ready, you are.

Seize The Day – It’s a Dual Gain

If you can grasp the concept of your website as a business asset and understand how that translates as a gain for your small business or organization, then you’ll see how it can also benefit your customer in the best of ways. You’ll see that it sets up a mutually beneficial loop you will each gain from. Your asset becomes their asset.

Carpe Diem

As the English teacher says in the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society: “Carpe Diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” (John Keating, played by Robin Williams)

Go ahead, “Strike out and find new ground.”

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Photo Credit: iStock, Heavily Re-mixed by Gina Fiedel

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