Website design for small business: issues to consider
What is the purpose of my website?
Most small business websites have two aims: (1) to inform the visitor and, (2) to sell them products or services. If you sell jewellery, for example, the purpose of your website is to inform your visitors of the range and quality of the jewellery you have on offer, and (hopefully) to sell them jewellery. If you offer a service such as web design, your website needs to show visitors that you offer the best website design service available and persuade them to sign up with you.
Your first job should be so define your website's objectives - in other words define exactly what you want it to do. Once you have done this, you should be able to write a mission statement - a single sentence that sums up what your website is about and what you want it to do. Your objectives and mission statement are important and they inform everything about your website - what pages you need, what functionality you need, what tone of voice your should use and the general look and feel of your site.
Who is my target audience?
Your target audience is the people you want to look at your website: usually potential and current customers. Anyone who might be interested in your company and its products or services is a member of your target audience. Identifying the nature of your target audience is important as it determines what your website should look and feel like and the tone of voice you use in your text. For example, if you are looking for a solicitor online, you would not be impressed with a website that contains child-like graphics and animations.
One tip is to imagine what your website should look like through your visitor’s eyes. What would you expect to find and what would you be disappointed not to find?
What is my competition doing?
It's important that you find out what your competitors are up to online. For example, do a Google search for similar businesses. Pay particular attention to the ones that come top of the results list as these are the ones that have successful websites and are doing things right. Explore their websites. What do they look like? What colours do they use? What is the main message they are trying to put across? What do you like about their Web sites? What don't you like? The answers to these questions are all useful pointers to what you should include on your site.
Another advantage of taking some time to review competitors' websites is that it will save you a lot of time with your research. For example, someone would have spent a lot of time planning and researching a site that ranks highly on Google. There's no harm in you taking inspiration from these sites.
What content should I include on my website?
Your website content should be informed by the nature of your business. So if you offer a courier service, you need to say what items you can transport, how far you are willing to travel, your rates and your contact details.
Do I need to do anything else once my website has been launched?
Launching your website is just the start the journey. Don't expect the visitors to come flooding to your site from the outset. It takes time for Google to index the content of your site and it may be several months before you begin to appear in the search engine rankings for any given search term.
Some people are happy for their sites to be an online reference point which they can point people to for more information on the products or services offered. But it you have more ambitious plans for your website and want visitors to find you via the search engines, then you need to actively market your site both online and offline.
Online activities include building up links to your websites from other websites that Google considers an 'authority' your the area. The more links you have to your site from 'authority' websites, the more highly Google is likely to regard your site and give it a good ranking in the search results. Link building is a hard slog. It involves emailing the owners of 'authority' websites to try to persuade them to include a link from their site to yours. They may only agree if you put a reciprocal link on your site. A word of warning though - beware of 'web rings' (where groups of similar websites link to each other). Google views web rings with suspicion and will not look favourable on websites who participate in these schemes as they boost links artificially. Best to avoid them completely. Another idea is to look for online directories who offer free listings.
Offline activities involve telling the world about your website. Make sure that you have your website address in your email signature. Make sure that all your promotional literature displays your email address. Send out press releases to local newspapers, magazines and trade journals announcing the launch of your new site.
Internet marketing campaigns
If you are really serious about marketing your website, you may consider employing an internet marketing expert to promote your site but these services can be expensive. Usually you pay the expert a monthly fee to keep your site high in the search engine results pages for certain keyword searches . Fees can range from from a few hundred pounds to over a thousand pounds per month depending on the size of the site and the amount of work involved.
Pay per click advertising
Another option to boost your traffic is to opt for a sponsored listing programme such as Google Adwords. These services are also known as 'pay per click' advertising. The idea is that you write a short advertisement for your website and this is displayed on the same page as the normal search results (to the right of these results on Google). Each each time someone clicks on your advertisement, you pay a fee to Google.
Some website owners use this service to get immediate visibility just after launch rather than waiting a month or so for Google to index the site.
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