September 17, 2007

Educationg Small Business Educators about Web Site Building

Web sites are still one of the most important tools for small businesses. They are easy to build, cost relatively little compared to other business communication expenses and are used by other businesses and potential customers to get information about you, often before they even meet you in person.

Reminds me a bit of water, free but you need it to live.

Homestead Technologies has partnered with the Association of Small Business Development Centers to train their counselors in how to build web sites using Homestead's easy to use web site building service.

The ASBDC has 1,100 Small Business Development Centers which trains over 1.3 million small businesses around the country. What better opportunity to help small businesses get web sites or design better ones than a local SBDC counselor.

The 2006 Small Business Survey, co-sponsored by Homestead Technologies and ASBDC revealed that SBDC counselors cited high cost, lack of technical skill and lifetime maintenance and editing costs, as the key barriers that prevented their clients from establishing a website.

Like many technologies part of the reasons small businesses do not implement the technology they need is due to lack of education. As in this case. They "think" producing a web site is expensive - but it's not. Sure you can pay thousands of dollars for a professional web designer to produce you web site, and in some cases you should. However, for the needs of many small businesses, a basic web site costing less then $20 per month is all they need. Homestead, in fact has web sites starting at $5 per month.

Another aspect of this new initiative that Homestead has started with ASBDC is training the trainers. Many SBDC counselors I'm sure are experts in finance, management, sales, HR and other resources. Homestead's survey indicates that only 6% of SBDC counselors felt comfortable giving online recommendations to their clients.

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