Small Buisness Web Sites

Web site design is a combination of technical capability, content creation, and artistic ability. We will examine each of these areas and give you our opinion on what each entails and our opinion on how much time or money you should consider spending on each when you are a small business operator and just getting started. Most small business owners just want to have a web site that advertises their business, provides contact information, and tells customers what services and products that they offer. There can be much more to a web site as we will discuss, and web site designers need to know the details of SEO.

Technical Capability

Technically your web site needs to work and deliver content to the reader and perform whatever functions you build into it, i.e., contact forms, email, ordering, and cash management, to name a few. There needs to be a domain name that resembles as much as possible the name of your company or the business that you are in. It should also have a country reference. If you are in the US, you probably want a .com URL, if, in Canada, you probably want a .ca URL. Next, you need to arrange for hosting. This is where your content will be saved and referenced when someone goes to your link.

The next major element is some sort of content management system. This system should make it easy for the nonprogrammer to upload content and to arrange your pages and posts so that readers can view them. It should also have several widgets and templates available so that you can customize your web site along with several pictures or videos about your products, your services, and your company. We use WordPress for our content management system, which allows us to set up your web site and then turn it over to the customer if desired to add their content. We can add the content for you as well if needed.

Web Site Designer – Content Creation

Your website needs content for several reasons. First and foremost, a business needs to tell readers what services or products that they are offering. It is your statement about what you can provide to the readers and an encouragement for them to drop by your store or call you to discuss the services that you might provide to them. Secondly, this is where you also talk about who you are, some information about your company and how to contact you. For most companies and small businesses, this is all you need unless you want to pursue two other elements.

One of these is to monetize your site, and by this, we mean to allow your customers to place purchase capability on your web site so that customers can place an order and pay for it on your web site. This functionality takes you to another level of the web site. Something like adding PayPal is relatively easy to do while adding other payment methods, inventory control, etc. will take more time and effort.

The second major item of content to consider is increasing the probability that the search engines will index you properly for all of the typical search terms that customers might use when searching for your products and services. For example, if you are selling widget X, and your company web site does not mention widget X anywhere on the site or with a combination of words that might be used, consumers searching for this term will never come to your site because you are not search engine optimized.

We can help you with Search Engine Optimization or SEO!

Web Site Designer – Artistic Ability

Finally, the last item is artistic ability. There are a lot of differing opinions about this area. Some people feel that web sites need to be elegant with lots of pictures etc., while others feel that you just need the facts. The bottom line is that it should be pleasing to the eye, and a little color does help. Business owners can spend thousands of dollars on a web site, making it fancy and colorful, however, do you get your ROI for doing this? We do not think so, and that is why we do not promote spending a great deal of money on this sort of thing.

If you need a small business web site set up for you, call us today or send us an email and we will get you going with your small business web site within a day or two at very reasonable prices.

For more ideas about what to consider in web design, click here.

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