Choosing Between A Blog And A Website

Posted by Nikhil on Apr 5th, 2009 | 2 comments

“Of course I want a website,” is the response that you’d expect from more than half of the people you’d ask the question. The fact remains that there is no right answer to this question. I think its more need-based than what’s ‘in’, because one of the primary reasons why a business may choose a website is to sell its products. Stats show that 55.8% of all websites have something or the other to sell. But why do people think that blogs are becoming synonymous with websites, perhaps overtaking them? I see five major reasons:

Ease of use You don’t have to be a techie to put up a blog. You don’t need to know any programming languages to start a professional blog, and with blogging platforms becoming increasingly user-friendly, anyone with access to an internet can get a presence on the internet. Most blogging platforms are offered in the SaaS model (Software as a service), which means that they do everything from give you a domain name to hosting your blog to give you a lot of gigs of free upload space. Which brings me to my next point.

Economical Blogs are way cheaper to put up than a professional website. Most blogging platforms are free to use and the only investment a business has to do is perhaps buy a domain name. And domain names are as cheap as $7 a year. On the other hand, putting up a website involves starting from scratch – the templates, the content, the design, the encoding, search engine optimization, maintenance, hosting, and just about anything else. There are SaaS models available that promise to put up, design and host your website for you, but they’re expensive. The cheapest one I could find costs $5 a month. Compare that to the investment in a blog, and you’ll see the difference.

Interactive Almost everyone who blogs will tell you that one of the coolest things about blogging is the discussion threads and comment forms. Its an instant feedback to whatever content goes up online, and its a great networking tool. With the right message and the right optimization procedures, you can reach out to a global audience who will be your end consumer for whatever services you’re offering. They have a chance to interact with you directly and more importantly, you have a chance to speak to your consumers in real time, with appropriate plug-ins.

Classroom Example, outlining the advantages of a blog

Widgets and Plug-ins Compared to a blog’s flexibility in terms of customization, a website is disappointingly static. There are plug-ins for almost anything – right from basics like a ‘Calendar’ and an ‘Archives’ widget to an ‘All-in-one SEO Pack’ to frills that make the blog look that much more beautiful. And none of these require an extensive knowledge of any programming languages. Anyone can do it. Perhaps the most useful widget for a business is the live-chat widget. Enabling this would help anyone who visits the blog to chat with someone from the company in real time, right there on the blog, with no logins and passwords required.

Content Management Blogs have the advantage of giving you complete freedom when it comes to your content. You can manage it anyway you want, make changes to the way they appear, the order in which they are listed, the ease of access and anything else. Its like being able to play with a bunch of building blocks without the fear of going wrong anywhere. Websites, on the other hand, are cumbersome and not very receptive to such flexibilities. They just exist.