Getting your website up and running, or doing a
major overhaul, is often a lot more work than you imagine before
starting the project, especially if you want it to be perfect. Check
out our small business website design tips to help you get a head start
and make the process easier by knowing what is important and what you can let slide.
1. Write out a clear idea of the purpose of the website before you begin any work on it.
Most people skip this step because they think it's
obvious, it's important. What is the number one purpose of your
website? To bring in new customers? To advertise current promotions and
specials? To build trust potential clients before even meeting them? Or
simply to keep up with the Joneses?
All are valid reasons for having a website, and
most likely you will want to take advantage of all of these, and more,
benefits of having an online presence. But unless you have a clear idea
of the number one result you want to get from your site, it's unlikely
you will manage to achieve that.
2. Stay objective.
It's tempting to fall madly in love with your new
virtual 'baby', especially if you built it yourself. But beware... Down
that path there be dragons.
If your number one goal is to bring in new, paying
customers to your business each month and if the search engines don't
know you exist because your website code is too difficult for them to
understand, they won't be able to send you visitors which will
hopefully turn into customers down the line.
Or if 90% of the people who come to your site get
lost and can't find what they are looking for, they will leave before
you are able to convert them into customers.
3. Decide early if it's important to get free search engine traffic.
If it is important to get free traffic, then your
designer/developer needs to know that as early as possible, as it will
affect how they code the website.
In fact, if it's important to you to then the
first thing you should be doing is making a list of keywords, or search
terms, that you think your future customers will use to find you on the
internet. (If you wait to do that step until some or all of the pages
are built, your designer will need to spend extra time changing things,
which is money out of your pocket.)
4. Be prepared to work a bit.
I know, everyone says that building a website is a
must and it will really help your business, but the real truth is that
you get out of a website exponentially how much you put into it. Even
if you have hired someone to do the technical stuff, the you still need
to give them some of the content. Testimonials are great and often
overlooked on small business websites, probably because it takes more
time and effort to contact customers and get something written up.
Also, writing a few articles or blog postings
about things you feel strongly about will not only help your traffic
results but it goes a long way to building trust with the reader before
they ever meet you.
5. Pick a good website designer.
First, be sure you have at least done step 1 and
step 3 above. Once you have a good idea of what results you want to get
from your website and whether or not good search engine traffic is
important to you, then you will find it easier to know when you have
found a good match or not.
Be sure to look at the websites in their portfolio to see if you like their style.
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If you liked these small business website design tips, take a look at our other technology articles and the Specialized Computing blog for more useful information.
