Buying a Web Site is Like Buying a Car: Part Two
If you are up to date then you know that a website is like a car and that your business needs one. When I was doing my research for my ill fated PowerPoint presentation, I found an article on www.edmonds.com called “10 Steps to Finding the Right Car for You”. After reading the article it was clear how easy it would be to apply these same steps to purchasing a website. Let me warn you now that some of these steps require a small to medium dose of imagination, but I doubt you would have made it this far if you didn’t already have that at your disposal. Now that I have dutifully warned you, I will move on.
The first step in the process is determining what it is you need. Your business needs a website. We’ve got that but what does that mean within this car analogy? In order to get there we have to take a really basic look at the car. What makes a car a car? We can all identify a car on sight. We can tell the difference between a car and a motorcycle, or skate board or bicycle and if we needed a car, we would never accept one of these as an alternative. Why? Because they are not a car and we know they will never meet our needs. Without getting into the minutia, there are specific physical requirements for a vehicle to be a car. Wheels, engine, blah blah. There are also understood functional requires that we all expect from a car. It must be able to carry a certain number of passengers. It must go a certain speed. The same holds true for a website and many people accept the motorcycle or skateboard equivalent of a site as their website because they can’t identify the “car” website.
The obvious next question is “how do I do I know it’s a car?” It is a simple question to ask but not as simple to answer. We are talking about business websites so your business will determine what you need. I know that’s lame but let me explain. You know those brown vehicles that deliver the packages for UPS. For many it’s a truck, to some it’s a van, but to UPS it’s a “Package Car”. It’s the vehicle that meets UPS business needs. (To be honest I never understood why they called them cars, but it really works for this analogy.) The UPS package car has all the parts we expect from what we normally consider a car plus the added parts required for UPS to get the functionality it needs from the vehicle. It’s exactly what UPS needs.
For most businesses a UPS Package car is way too big, way too uncomfortable and way too expensive to maintain. It just wouldn’t work. UPS’s website is the same way. Unless you can afford the expense of administrators and servers that UPS employs then it is probably more than you need. Much like the package car the UPS website meets the basic structural and functional things that every business needs which makes it a car. It meets the needs of both UPS and its customers. It answers question for customer service like “where’s my stuff”. It asks question to qualify potential sales. These are two of things your website may need to do.
The point being is that websites can look as different as a UPS Package car and Corvette but if they meet all the required structural and functional needs then they are both cars. Your business is what makes that determination. There is no cookie cutter answer here. Every business has specific needs that must be addressed to have a website that can deliver on the potential that having the right online presence can provide for your business, your customers and your bottom line.
The answer to “How do I know a website is a car?” can only be answered by more questions. Whether you are preparing to enter the world of the internet for the first time or evaluating the site you currently have, the most important question to ask is “ Does it meet all my business needs?”
