Home » Business & Finance » Internet Business » What You Can Learn From Miss America

What You Can Learn From Miss America

© Debbie Levitt

And it's important to imagine who your website will reach especially compared to how else you reach people, and decide upon an appropriate amount of money to spend. If your newsletter reaches 10,000 people each quarter, and it costs you $20,000 each time to design, write, print, and mail it, AND your website can reach millions with much more updated and dynamic information, one would imagine that your website budget could easily meet or beat the $80K you're spending each year on newsletters. How about trade shows or conferences? If the travel, staff time, booth stuff, and the like cost you $40,000 per show for two shows a year, again your website should meet or beat this. When those people aren't in your booth or office, you probably want them in your website, which should be just as warm, welcoming, and informative. Look at what you are spending on getting your message out there and promoting your brand, and imagine your website to be equal or greater than any of those, or so I propose.

And my point is also that appearance counts on the web. Surf www.missamerica.org a bit and then drop by www.missusa.com, one of their direct competitors. One of these companies is clearly investing in their web presence. So as a potential consumer looking at two websites for any two competing companies, which attracts you more? Which one makes you want to come back or learn more? Which one might you want to work or volunteer for?

Website design and execution is not trivial. Does that mean I want everyone to spend $80K per year or you're a loser? No way. But the Miss America folks definitely have a design that looks like a few thousand dollars, whereas my company would probably have charged Miss USA around $100K between the e-commerce, contestant database, Flash intro, and other elements that make this the nice (or at least nicer) site that it is. I think a website is an important investment that should be carefully planned and considered from the message to the budget to the company who'll build and maintain it. You can learn from the contrast the MAO site provides to possibly reconsider how you make these types of decisions. At some point, it may no longer serve you to have your fiancee's brother's roommate's pal do your international corporate site. :)