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Having The Proper
Web Tools to Run Your Business
There are countless website
hosting solutions available all claiming they are exactly what
you need and trying to one up their competition.
The reality is that you need
the best website system for your business. There is no
substitution for having the right tools to run your business.
Probably the most important
tool to consider is support for your website. Since you are not a
technology expert it does not make sense to use unsupported
software or website hosting. When you have a problem with your
website you need to be able to call someone and get help.
Lets say you used an open
source shopping cart like Zen cart or OS Commerce and all of a
sudden the cart is not working correctly. Who are you gonna call?
You find yourself on your own and have to hire a programmer to
track down the problem taking hours and costing hundreds or even
thousands of dollars not to mention your website being inoperable
during the entire process.
Using a site builder like
pageBuzz insures that you have an operational shopping cart at
all times and if there is a problem it is the company that must
fix it at our expense.
So you think if the cart is
working when you installed it then it should keep working, right?
Wrong. Lets say the hosting company updates the server O/S for
security updates and your cart stops working. Now the program
will need to be adjusted to work within the new security updates.
Since the programmer you hire is not familiar with the shopping
cart coding it could take many hours to fix the problem all
caused by a simple server update that you don't have any control
of.
While it is great to use free
tools to build and manage your website but there is no warranty
or support for free products. Yes you saved money getting started
but in the long term it could ruin your business because you were
so cheap in the beginning.
The advantage of using open
source carts is that you can modify the code to handle unique
functions. You can tweak the code to display items or run unique
gateways that other programs don't support. But all that coding
is expensive and again, unsupported.
Don't expect a programmer to
work too cheaply, and when you have a problem with the cart you
will be paying dearly for help to fix it. But most of all the
problems are a huge inconvenience .
You can also find other
problems like, the shopping cart won't work on the newest version
of IE. That is a very common problem and one that can destroy a
business. Without a cart that works you are sunk and again hiring
a programmer to fix problems not caused by you but by new
technology.
Using supported systems will
save you many headaches and thousands of dollars. Supported
systems like the pageBuzz shopping cart are updated constantly to
keep up with browsers and insure they always work despite the
firewalls and oddities that occur in browser versions.
It may make sense to try to
save money with free programs but knowing that you are not a
programmer you should seriously consider what could happen to
your business if there is a problem. Can you really afford it?
When you can get a fully
supported shopping cart for $20 a month it just does not make
sense to use something you just don't fully understand.
In every business you need to
have the right tools. If you run a delivery service you need
trucks that don't break down every day or repairs can cost you
more than you make. If you manufacture a product you need tools
and processes that make it cost effective and efficient. Just
because you can buy an old broken down machine cheaper on ebay
than buying a new one does not mean you save money. In most cases
it will cost you more and have a negative impact on your business.
You would not show up on a
construction project to dig a hole with a teaspoon. Don't show up
for business online with the wrong tools.
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