Websites for small business

Web sites for small business

This is an overview of what you might consider if you want to set up a website for your small business. It is not an in-depth tutorial and definitely not expert opinion. Instead it gives you some high-level ideas and tips to consider when getting started.

Naturally, your needs are going to be unique and you must make the final decision on all content, style and financial choices to be made.

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Step 1: Choose and register your domain nameStep 2: Outline the content you want on your siteStep 3: Decide on a LogoStep 4: Design Your Small Business Website SiteStep 5: Work on your SEO

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Step 1: Choose and register your domain name When possible, your domain name should include your

company name A shorter web name is always best Avoid punctuation like dashes and dots It should be unique to avoid confusion with other sites Always choose a .COM version of your domain

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Step 2: Outline the content that you want on your site.

Every website should have at least 5 sections: Homepage Products and/or services Testimonials About Us Contact Us

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Step 2 (cont.): Outline the content that you want on your site.

Homepage: Include the name of your business What it is you do Where you’re located or area you serve Give a few reasons for doing business with your

company

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Products and Services: Details about your products or services. Include a few

paragraphs about the products and give the pricing If you have a catalog of products, these may be on a

collection of pages in a web store along with a brief description and pricing for each

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Testimonials: Show off your experience Develop credibility Establish rapport and trust

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About Us: Provide your background and history, the point is to

show why you are qualified to do what you do List and link to relevant affiliations and memberships,

such as the BBB

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Contact Us: Include this information in the footer of every page

and have a dedicated page Include address, email, phone number, hours of

operation Links to any social media accounts (e.g. Twitter,

Facebook, Manta) Include a map of your location for clients who need to

find you.

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Step 3: Decide on a Logo and Theme If you already have a logo for offline work, use this for

your digital footprint as well The colors and style in your logo determine the colors

and style for your entire site For readability, avoid heavily styled text fonts and

highly distracting colors or backgrounds for paragraph text

Consider which is more valuable, having each page with the same templated look or a theme with a slightly different look on each

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Step 3 (cont.): Decide on a Logo and Theme An engineering consultant may wish to present a

technical look and feel. In order to utilize royalty free material, this person

may wish to use vintage engineering clip art and photos.

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Step 4: Design Your Small Business Website Site Consider using a website builder to make future

updates easier, e.g. Wordpress, Weebly, Squarespace, Google Sites

If you have a catalog of products and need a shopping cart app, consider using Etsy.com (handmade goods), Amazon.com or ebay.com

You may purchase your domain name for a fee on your regular website and simply point to your shopping site when customers are ready to buy

Or, you may host your products on a website that does both

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Step 4 (cont.): Design Your Small Business Website Site Avoid Flash media – this is not only undesirable from a

user standpoint but is also does not register with search engine web crawlers (see Step 5)

Mobile browsing compatibility – as of July 2015 mobile devices (smartphones & tablets) make up 51% of the web browsing, computers (desktop & laptop) are 42%; mobile browsing compatibility is a must!

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Step 5: Work on your SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is what increases your chances of being found (ranking) when potential customers search for a product or service like yours on the major search engines such as Google and Bing. SEO is the most cost effective way to bring in new

business A drawback is it takes time and effort, that's why so

few do it the right way, they want fast results. Doing it the “fast” way still takes time and costs extra.

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Step 5 (cont.): Work on your SEO

There are generally two types of SEO: On-page – Within your control and includes everything

you put on your site that can potentially be scanned by search engine crawlers

Off-page – Mainly out of your control and comprised primarily of links on other sites back to your pages. You may be able to have a positive effect on this by blogging and participating in forums

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On-page: Includes meta-tags (meta content) – These are HTML

tags embedded in the code of your web page and have keywords to tell search engines what your website is about

Includes Links – Links can point to other locations within your website or to other websites, search engines evaluate the links and their destinations to help in your rankings.

Always review your site to make certain your links are not broken!

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On-page: Use relevant Keywords – these are the visible content

of your website. For example: If you write with words such as taxes, invoice, accounting, etc., search engines will assume you are an accountant.

Prospective customers also use keywords and phrases to locate businesses such as yours

You must be certain to include pertinent keywords in order to be found, both in the main content and in the meta-tags

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On-page: Localization – If you are a handyman, potential

customers won't find you if they simply type 'handyman' in Google

For example: Including 'handyman in Windsor CO' will

tell the search engines you are from Windsor Colorado and you will have much a better chance of being found

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On-page: Misspelled keywords – Users frequently misspell words

when searching, especially mobile users who type with their thumbs. It is very helpful to include possible misspellings in the meta-tags where they will not be visible.

For example: 'handyman', 'handiman', 'handy man'.

Other examples can include cultural spelling

differences such as 'color' and 'colour'.

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On-page: Grammar and Misspelled words – Check, double-check

and have a friend check your website for errors. Errors are not a problem for some people but for others, it can reflect badly on the reputation and credibility you are trying to build.

A survey by Global-Lingo indicates that 74% of people

notice bad grammar on websites and 59% say they would reconsider buying products from a website with spelling errors.

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http://www.global-lingo.com/



On-page:Bad spelling – sometimes spelling errors occur as a result of computerized auto-checks. For example a education software company advertised:

'So fun, they won't even know their learning'

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Submit your website. You've worked hard to get to this point, now you need to let the world know you are online. It is quite simple and there is no need to pay a fee. Go to:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url Fill out the information for your home page address.

The crawlers will take it from there to scan your entire site. The other search engines will soon follow suit or you can submit on each of those as well.

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https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url



Once you have submitted your website, it is not necessary repeat this every week. Only consider doing so if it appears new pages you may have added are not being scanned after a couple of days.

This presentation does not go into tracking your SEO performance, there are plenty of online articles and resources for this.

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Once again here are your five steps.

Step 1: Choose and Register Your Domain NameStep 2: Outline the content that you want on your site.Step 3: Decide on a LogoStep 4: Design Your Small Business Website SiteStep 5: Work on your SEO

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Hosting Resources:

Some of these work well as a one stop solution for sellers and others allow more design and technical flexibility.

https://learn.wordpress.com/get-started/ http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/stores/start.html https://www.etsy.com/sell http://www.weebly.com/ http://www.squarespace.com/ https://sites.google.com

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https://learn.wordpress.com/get-started/

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/stores/start.html

https://www.etsy.com/sell

http://www.weebly.com/

http://www.squarespace.com/

https://sites.google.com/


Social Resources:This list is only a starting point.

https://twitter.com/ https://www.facebook.com/ http://www.manta.com/ https://www.blogger.com

Site Submittal Resources: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url

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https://twitter.com/

https://www.facebook.com/

http://www.manta.com/

https://www.blogger.com/

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url