Small Business Website

Why you need a website for your small business, and how to get it.

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Small Business Website

Why does a small business need a website?

This tutorial, entitled Small Business Website, is the last in this series of tutorials on Making Money from your website (see menu). It is aimed primarily at owners of existing small businesses who are thinking about taking their business online, but it could also be useful if you are planning to start a small business with a website.

How can a small business website help your local business? By drawing potential customers from your locality into your website you increase awareness of your business, its brands, products and its location.

Leverage your ad-spend

If you advertise your business in traditional local media, a website helps you to leverage your advertising expenditure. By placing your domain name into your advertisements, you encourage readers to look up your website and find out more about your business, its products and services.

A small advertisement doesn't tell your potential customers much about your business, but your website can tell them everything you want them to know!

Having a website also opens the door to advertising your business on the web, which can be more cost effective than traditional media.

What sort of small business websites succeed?

If your business is situated close to, or within a city, there are probably many people living and working within range of your business who would try to find a businesses like yours on the Internet. You might, or might not use the web that way, but more and more people do.

Here are some examples of local businesses that benefit from their websites:

accountants
auto dealers
auto repairs
chiropractors
computer retailer travel agents
dentists
florists
garden services
guest houses
hardware retailers
hotels
insurance agents
lawyers
limousine services
locksmiths
maid services
massage therapists
mortgage brokers
movers
pharmacies
physicians
plumbers
real estate agents
restaurants

Most of these businesses are not actually selling from their websites. They are promoting their businesses and brands from their sites, and bringing customers into their shops, consulting rooms or offices. These customers are not completely cold, your website warmed them up. (Pre-sold is the term!)

Some businesses can sell products from their website, or at least take in orders. People are even ordering their take-away pizza's from a website! The pizza business owners report that online customers tend to order more than telephone customers. (They can see the full range of products and can take their time making their decision.)

You may not see your business in the list above, but I'll bet you could develop a successful website for your kind of business too. When you do that, please let me know about it, so I can add your business type to this list!

How to ensure that your small business website succeeds

A sound website will bring business to your door, even without your spending any money on advertising. But it has to be done right:

A website has to be well-structured around a suitable niche topic.
Its pages have to be well-designed, quick to load, easy to scan, quick to read (unless it's a tutorial of course, Ha ha!)
The content must be appealing and interesting to the type of person the website must attract, and it must be written with search engines in mind.
Site navigation must be easy and intuitive.
Finally, no matter how good the website is, it has to be properly promoted before any traffic will arrive.

This list is by no means complete. But those are some of the critical areas.

Because its easy to overlook something critical, many business owners who have taken the online plunge and created their website, find that no one uses it, if they can even find it. Those small business websites are white elephants.

There are no short-cuts that I know of. If you want your website to be successful you will have to make sure it is done right. How can you do that?

Get yourself up to speed!

Well, as it happens, you're at exactly the right place. No, its all right, relax.... I'm not trying to sell you something, except perhaps an idea!

It's just that, this website's purpose is to give you all the information you need to conceive, build and promote a website. Not just any website, but what I call a winning website - one which fulfils its owners expectations.

But perhaps you've got to this last tutorial because you've completed the course? Then you know exactly what I've been talking about! On the other hand, if you have just landed on this page because you're thinking about getting a website going for your business, then these next few remarks are for you....

The Easy Website Primer training ground

As you will see from a brief glance at our tutorials menu, there's a great deal of ground to cover. That is so, I'm afraid. And it isn't really possible to build a good website without knowing this stuff, or getting the job done by someone who does.

And if you give the job to someone else, how will you know whether he knows it or not? After all, most of those failed sites you see out there (and there are millions of them!) were built by someone who thought they knew what needed to be done, or at least convinced their client that they knew.

My recommendation is this: whether you want to create your website yourself, or give it over to a professional, put yourself through this Easy Website Primer. Then you will really understand what has to be done, and you can make sure it's done properly.

(If you plan to get a professional to do the work, you will not need to learn the technical aspects, such as HTML tags, and you can skip over most of the tutorials on actually building the site, but most of the other tutorials may be useful to you, if they apply in your case.)

Getting the most out of a small business website

You will pick up plenty of information about website preparation, build and promotion on this course, but here are some specific tips that apply mainly to a local small business website:

Include your physical address on every page of your website.
Include the place names you service on each page too.
Include your type of business on each web page. So if someone searches for a "plumber in Kensington" the search engine will be able to direct him to the right page. (Your page, if you happen to be a plumber who services Kensington.)
Place names in page titles are great too.
Create a free listing in Google Maps Local Business Centre and Yahoo!
Submit your website for listing in any trade organisation sites or specialized directories for your industry.
If you belong to a trade association, ask them to place a link in their website, pointing to yours.
Include your website address (URL) on all stationery, cards, brochures, and in all advertisements.
Consider running an affiliate program and paying sales commission to other small business websites (in your locality) to encourage them to send you business. Alternatively advertise on their websites.

That brings us to the end of this tutorial, and in fact, to the end of this Easy Website Primer. I hope it's helped you.

If you found it useful, you're more than welcome to link to any page of this site, so that other website developers can find us.

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Links / Resources

More articles on creating a small business website:

How to create a small business website that works

Essential small business website pages

Dont just build a website-Build one that works for you

Build and promote your website

Before you launch that local small business website

Make Money: Small Business Website Top Prev Next: No more tutorials

Create a small business website to extend the reach of your local small business