Chicago Tribune Covers Website Development and Domains

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-mon_minding_0702jul02,0,6971095.story?coll=chi-business-hed

This piece extols the virtues of having "a website" to conduct commerce with. Yes, that seems very 1996, but it's a very short curve from the time a site operator buys one generic descriptive domain name to when they buy 2 or 5 or 26 to point to their core site in order to drive relevant traffic.

Quote: "..Even choosing a domain name can be daunting. The name picked by a small-business owner should be intuitive to customers, but often isn't. Owners often think of names or phrases that mean something special to them but might be obscure to the buying public... The domain name is 21st Century real estate. You have to have that thing..."

People aren't dumb..  I read that through innocent eyes and I think to myself, I better get 20 acres somewhere  :)

Comments

[josh/Swerve]

""It turns out, Pesavento is hardly alone in being late to the Internet party. Nearly 40 percent of small businesses do not have a Web site, according to a National Small Business Association survey released in April""

In a way, that 40 percent doesn't surprise me, but nonetheless, it's a very large number.

***FS*** Agree.. that's a lot of untapped oppportunity.

In order to speed up the convertion of those 40% who the report says are technically overwhelmed by the experience of buying a website, parking services could add an additional link to the parked pages such as "This is how your website may look like if you buy this domain" (or shorter like 'benefits of owning this name'). AND, on that page there could be an introductory parahraph that rephrases the benefits of owning a domain -beautifully explained in that report- together with a crystal clear procedure to 1) buy the name, 2) set up a 5 page website... to finalize the pitch with links to resources offering simple web design and low cost web maintenance.

[Mike Maddaloni]

Despite the fact that most business people don't know the minutae of law or accounting, they know to get an attorney and accountant. For some reason a Web site, or preferably an Internet presence, is still this unreachable item for their business.

Where this means there's plenty of opportunity for Web developers like myself (who is based in Chicago nonetheless) it is also a challenge to think through and package the education process, so you are not spending all of your time in hand holding but in educating the public, and from that credibility will come the gig.

mp/m