- What type of website should a small business have?
- What should a small business website look like?
- What content should a small business website have?
The above are questions that many small businesses will be asking themselves when it comes to developing their own websites. They know they need to be on the web, they know that there is potential value to their business in being on the web, but their not quite sure how or what apart from the need for a website….
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This article is aimed at helping small businesses use the web effectively and to get their first website up and running and working for them (or to redevelop an existing site).
We will use a series of steps which can help any small business plan its website and help to create that business an effective website.
Step 1: Define the purpose of the website
Believe it or not, defining the purpose of the website is something that is often overlooked by many small businesses when it comes to planning their website. Primarily this is because most small businesses think they know what they want, but because they haven’t defined it, they often miss the mark.
Simply put, only by defining a purpose of your website can you ever judge whether your website has been successful or not, or what you need to do to make it successful!
For example, you may want your website to deliver any (or all) of the following:
- sell your products or services on-line (an on-line shop)
- promote your business (advertising)
- support your business (many customers expect you to have a website)
- provide information to potential and existing customers (brochure site)
- provide support to existing customers (technical information, questions and answers etc.)
Once you have chosen what you want your website to deliver, you can then start to plan it much more effectively in terms of what you need to include on that website and how it should look and feel.
Step 2: What do you think you need to communicate to achieve your objective (purpose)
Having defined the purpose of the website, we now need to structure some relevant content to “sell” the business.
From a business owners point of view, this could include:
- What we do, what we sell – page(s) explaining the product or service that the business offers
- Our pricing for what we do and what we sell
- Where we are – if it’s a bricks and mortar business, then we need to tell customers where they can find us
- Our unique selling point (USP) – in other words what does the business do better than anyone else, or more simply – why you should do business with us (this could be one factor – “we are the cheapest”, or it could be a combination of factors – “we offer the best service in your community at the best prices”
A key thing to think about here is that the internet is driven by “content”. Google and other search engines index pages according to what they “think” there about based upon the pages content. Therefore, it is critical to get appropriate content on your website, explaining what you do, where you are etc.
Olasto 