Last year, only 50% of all small business in the United States had a website. When 2011 began, 64 percent of small businesses reported having a website, but that still left an astounding 36 percent of small businesses without a web presence.
Do all small businesses need to have a website? Perhaps not – but many people now look for products and services online. When you look for a restaurant or a salon, where do you look? It’s unlikely you’re browsing your paper version of the Yellow Pages.
If you have a website, your potential customers can find you. If you don’t have a website, your potential customers will find your competitors.
A website is the hub of a small business’s marketing efforts through other channels (print, SEO, SEM, email, direct, mobile, etc.). If you run a small business, you should have your own website – even if it’s a simple site.
If you’re ready to get your small business online or want to improve your existing website, here are five tips to help you get started:
1. Create Your Website
There are many ways that small businesses can quickly and cheaply create their first website, or improve the sites they already have. Options range from low cost sites through GoDaddy, to sophisticated sites, with analytics, A/B testing, blogging tools, SEO,and other value-adds from Hubspot. Some small businesses are paralyzed by the complexity of creating their own site – but keep in mind that you’re not building a competitor to Amazon.com. For many small businesses, you need just a few pages that tell users about your business, provide some key information (a bit about you, your location, hours, phone number, photos, etc.). You can start small and build from there.
To help you, here are some pages you should consider including on your site.
Don’t skimp on design – consumers prefer and trust better looking websites. If you know a freelance designer, hire them to design your site, or join the tens of thousands of small businesses from all over the world who’ve crowdsourced website design on crowdSPRING. For more ideas about the types of designs you can crowdsource, I recommend you read Five Designs Small Businesses and Startups Should Crowdsource.
Whenever possible, follow best practices when designing your site. For example, if your small business is a restaurant, I recommend that you read Best Practices and Tips for Restaurant Web Design. For other small businesses, I recommend you read Small Business Marketing: Web Design Best Practices and Tips.
Once you’ve built your site, it’s relatively easy to implement more sophisticated offerings like search engine optimization to promote the site in local search, search engine marketing to pull traffic to the website, and website optimization. But don’t focus merely on traffic – pay attention to conversions.
To learn more about optimizing your website and to help you avoid common optimization mistakes, I recommend you read Startup and Small Business Marketing: Website Optimization Mistakes. To learn more about SEO (search engine optimization), I recommend you read New SEO Started Guide From Google, Search Engine Optimization Tips For Startups and 10 Practical Small Business SEO and SEM Marketing Tips.
Your website will be the hub for all your online and offline marketing efforts. While you could maintain an active presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ or other social networks, most small businesses will benefit from pulling much of their traffic to their own website – where they have full control over the content and look and feel of the site.
A few things to consider as you set up your site:
You’ll need to choose a domain name (URL) for your website. If you’re starting a new business and need a name or need a name for your website, I recommend you read 10 Tips For Startups and Small Businesses on Naming Your Company (includes tips on domain names).
You’ll also need to find a host. There are many good hosting options – we’ve used Rackspace and MediaTemple but also have heard good things about Slicehost. There are also plenty of free options, including blogging platforms like WordPress.
Although many hosts will offer backup options in case you run into problems, there are plenty of good tools (many are free) that will help you keep your blog and site backed up.
