Of course, your site should have a good look, be easy to navigate, and be optimized for the search engines. And that’s a long way from what a lot of companies have.

But we think that it’s even more important to give your customers features and tools that make your site a necessary stopping point. Depending on your business, you should have a customer portal giving them constant updates on their projects, support cases, training materials, or ways to share confidential files with you. You should have a blog to share tips and lessons learned. Your site should prove to them that you’re an expert in your field.

All of this can be done, and it can be done affordably with a little planning and a little time.