Steps to success: small business website design

Every small business needs a website, but how does a small business owner, who is not a website designer, go about planning a website or hiring a professional designer?

As you travel around the web, you’ll see that not all websites are created equally. Some are stunning in their aesthetic appeal. Others are impressive in the quality of their content. Many miss the mark because of stale, poorly planned designs or weak, ineffective content.

Many small business owners run out and get a website without any foresight or planning. I get requests for quotes almost every day from business owners who know they need a website but haven’t given it much thought.

Your small business website design will be instrumental in marketing your business. It’s not something you need to spend years on, but it’s also not something you just toss together like a salad. With careful, strategic planning, your small business website will come together nicely and then do an excellent job bringing customers to your business.

Here are five simple steps every small business owner can take toward getting an effective website built from the ground up.

Step One: Know Your Audience

The first rule of effective website design is to know your audience. That means you need to identify your target customers and then build a website that will resonate with them. Once you have defined the audience for your site, every future online marketing project from your website design to your Facebook page can be created with a clear, consistent purpose. And best of all, sites built for a targeted audience have a higher success rate. If you want your small business website design to attract customers, then make sure you build it for those customers, not for your designer, your industry, or even yourself.

Step Two: Content Development

Most web professionals agree that a site’s content should drive the design and not the other way around. Before you get started with your new small business website design, develop a comprehensive content plan. Here are some questions to consider during the content development phase:

• Do you already have a logo? If not, you might want to get one before you start on your website design.
• What will be on your home page? Will it be image-driven or text-driven? The most effective home pages serve as an introduction to a site’s content.
• How many pages will the site have? Try to include the basics: home, about, contact, FAQ, and at least one page that describes your products or services.
• Will the site include a blog? Articles? Videos?
• How often will the site be updated or changed? Keep in mind that if you don’t make your own updates, you’ll have to pay someone every time a small change is made. Also, remember that the more frequently you update your site, the better your search engine rank will be.

When you’re getting ready to launch or redesign your website, develop the content first, and then choose a design that complements it, or plan a flexible design that can hold various amounts and types of content.

Step Three: Image and Branding

Your site should reflect your company image. Are you sleek and professional? Warm and friendly? Cutting edge? Your image is an essential part of your brand, and it should be reflected in everything that relates to your website and your company – from press releases to advertisements.

One of the most essential branding components is your logo. If you don’t have one, your website designer may be able to create one for you as part of your design package. Your logo should appear on your business cards, website, ads, and all other materials that you share, publish, or distribute.

If you start with a logo and company image or tone, you’ll already have the foundation in place for your small business website design. Design solutions come quickly and easily and work best when a well-planned brand is already in place.

Step Four: Products and Services

There is nothing more frustrating than a website with an unclear purpose. When customers come to your site, they should easily be able to determine what, exactly, you offer. But many sites fail in this area. They stuff the site full of industry jargon that a customer can’t possibly relate to and fail to include any information about how transactions work. Customers who are confused are not likely to buy. Use laymen’s terms to describe your offer (not industry language), and be clear about how customers can place orders.

Step Five: Finally, Bring in the Designer

If you’re not comfortable with the first four steps, you can always skip to this one and look for a designer who can walk you through the planning process and lend expert advice on how to build a site that appeals to your customers.

Here are a few tips for finding a website designer:

• Find a designer whose style you like. Be sure to check their portfolio to see the work they’ve done.
• Let the designer know up front what kind of budget you’re working with. There’s no sense wasting time with a designer who is out of your price range (website design rates run the gamut from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars).
• Also, let the designer know if your site will require any special features or functionality like e-commerce checkouts.
• Understand the designer’s job. A designer is not a copywriter, website manager, or graphic artist. If you need these other services, let the designer know so he or she understands how many people will be involved in the project. Or, look for a design firm that offers all of these services.
• Find a designer you like to work with. There’s a good chance you and your website designer will have a long-term business relationship.
• Get some ideas together before you approach a designer. Find a few websites with designs you like and show these to your designer so he or she understands your style preference.

In these times, a well-built small business website is critical to success. Whether you’re starting a brand new design or revamping an existing one, don’t rush. Take the time to plan carefully so you save time and money and get it done right the first time.

Scribizzy offers website design and content development services for small businesses. To get started, request a no-obligation quote online.

An introduction to web content development

Web content development is the process of generating material that supports and promotes your online presence.

Throughout the course of developing your web content, you will brainstorm, plan, research, organize, and create content for online publication. And then you’ll publish it.

For a small business owner, this content should be designed with one purpose in mind: to advance the goals of your business.

It usually starts with your website, but web content can include any online content that represents you or your business. It consists of text, images, audio, and video that are accessible on the Internet.

Establishing an online presence can be challenging, and it can be fun. If approached thoughtfully, it can be quite helpful in terms of marketing your business. In other words, smart web content development can lead to online success, and if a business operates mostly or entirely on the internet, then web content can make or break it.

The Importance of Web Content Development

Almost every day I am confronted with websites that were not properly developed. In some cases, it’s unclear what the website’s purpose is – the business offerings have not been clearly established. In other cases, the content is out of sync with the design – the planning and building were poorly executed. Many more websites are outdated and have never been updated or regularly maintained.

Businesses that take their online presence seriously and want to establish a strong hold in the online marketplace must treat their web content development with a sense of priority.

Whether you need a simple, three-page website or an elaborate site packed with content, you will find the process easier and more fruitful if you take the time to develop content that works effectively, content that helps your business reach its goals.

Five Easy Steps

There are five simple steps in the web content development process. Each phase can be broken down into smaller stages, and each of these could take several weeks or several months, depending on how extensive your online presence will be.

1. Conceptualize (brainstorm)
2. Plan (organize)
3. Build (create or execute the plan)
4. Launch (publish and publicize)
5. Maintain and update

Each step is critical. Leave one out, and your site will suffer.

The Nitty Gritty of Web Content Development

Let’s take a more detailed look at each of the five phases in web content development, keeping in mind that this is a general overview.

Concept

Concepts begin with an idea or a vision, but it also must have purpose. In this phase, you establish the purpose of your web content development plan. Why do you need an online presence? Are you trying to build a platform, find customers, or sell more widgets? You also brainstorm in this phase. What information needs to be on your website? How much off-site content should you create to drive visitors to your site? Which mediums will you use — text, images, videos?

Plan

The planning phase is the most critical. Start by deciding what web content you absolutely need in order to achieve your goals, and then build that into a design plan. Remember, content first, then design. Also remember, your plan can be long-term. You might want to end up with 100 pages of content. Maybe this month you can get the first ten completed. Use time to your advantage and work within your budget constraints. By regularly allocating funds to your web content development, you can execute your plan over time and keep your site fresh.

Build

Building is when you put your concept and plan into action. You may have many components being built simultaneously – a website designer creating your site while a copywriter prepares the text. A careful and well-laid plan will lead to an easier build. Toward the end of the building phase, you’ll start working on your launch.

Launch

It happens in a flash. After months of web content development, website design, and content writing, your site launches (or relaunches). Some launches are quiet. Others are loud. Once the site goes live, you can start driving traffic to it. This is also part of the launch – spreading the word about your site (also known as online marketing).

Maintain

After the launch, it might feel like all the hard work is over. That would be wrong. Every website needs to be maintained. Some sites are maintained constantly and updated several times a day. Others are updated weekly or monthly. A small few are only updated every year or so, though this is only a good idea in rare cases. Making updates to your site and proactively managing it (by monitoring your traffic, for example) are critical to the success of your online presence.

Common Mistakes – The Don’ts

There are plenty of mistakes that people make with web content development. Here are a handful of things you don’t want to do:

• Don’t plan your design before you plan your content. They should complement each other, but the design should be built to hold the content. Also, keep in mind that you may add content over time, so choose a design that’s flexible enough to handle growth.
• Don’t start driving traffic to your site until it’s completed.
• Don’t launch until you’ve thoroughly tested the site on all platforms and browsers.
• Don’t expect your site to be an overnight success. Building a website is hard, but getting traffic to a brand new site is much harder. Be patient, stick with it, and success will come.

Make sure you stay focused on your site’s primary purpose. Web content development can get messy. You’ll have lots of great ideas, but they won’t all lend themselves to the goals you’re trying to achieve. Make sure your plan sticks to your purpose and don’t get sidetracked.

Social media marketing for small businesses

We’ve already defined social media marketing. Now, let’s look at some best practices for small business owners who want to leverage social media to reach their customers.

With all the buzz about social media, many small business owners are setting up social media profiles and trying to use these networks to market their products and services.

Some are seeing great results: an influx of traffic, connecting with existing customers, and getting those customers to promote their products and services online, which draws new customers. Indeed, the benefits of an effective social media marketing campaign can be far-reaching.

Yet many small business owners find social media complicated, overwhelming, and far too technical for their tastes. I’ve worked with entrepreneurs who, in a flurry, set up profiles on every social media network available, and then burnt out within weeks because they didn’t have time to learn all the platforms, didn’t understand which platforms were appropriate for their business model, and didn’t realize that social media is not about advertising, it’s about connecting.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Today, I’d like to share a few basic tips and best practices to help small business owners get started with social media marketing.

1. Choose the platforms that match your business offerings.

Let’s say you’re a doctor. You hear all the buzz about Twitter and decide it’s time to get on board. You plan to use Twitter to reach out to your existing patients and to bring new patients into your office. But after months of tweeting, you aren’t seeing any results. What’s gone wrong?

People don’t generally use Twitter to find essential services. Twitter is the Internet’s proverbial water cooler. It’s where folks talk about their interests and passions: movies, music, books, politics, and causes. It’s not exactly the environment for engaging with your doctor or looking for a new one.

A doctor is much better off using Facebook. People on Facebook readily like products and service providers that they patronize. And when they do, their friends on Facebook see the connection, giving a business more exposure. LinkedIn is also highly appropriate for doctors, since it’s geared toward professionals. Doctors acquire most of their patients through referrals, and LinkedIn presents an ideal platform to build a referral network of medical professionals.

That’s not to say that Twitter is never appropriate for a doctor — there are many cases in which it would be a beneficial platform for a doctor, especially if that doctor has a blog, appears at speaking engagements, or has published a book.

It’s not enough to just jump on the social media bandwagon. You’ve got to pick which wagons in the caravan are right for you.

2. Consistency in Branding and Messaging.

Once you know which social media networks are going to be a good match for your business, you can start setting up profiles. This is where understanding branding and basic marketing comes in handy. You should use one image (your logo) consistently across all marketing channels as your core identifier. These marketing channels include your social media profiles. You want there to be a sense of familiarity between your business cards, your website, and every social media profile that represents your business. Remember: consistency breeds familiarity.

3. Prepare to Learn.

Everyone’s using social media, so you might think it’s super easy. You’ll just set up a Facebook page, and in a few days, you’ll see all kinds of new business rolling in.

Not so fast.

There’s a definite learning curve involved in using social media, and then in using it to market a business. Sure, your kids may be social media wizards, but they are probably using these networks to socialize, not to sell products and services. Invest some time in learning techniques and strategies for social media marketing, and then spend some time learning how to master each social media platform. Otherwise, think about hiring someone to help you.

4. Make a plan, check your budget, and allocate your resources.

Before you launch any kind of marketing campaign, you should have a plan. How often will you update your Facebook page? What will you tweet about? When will you post to LinkedIn? Social media marketing requires a significant investment of time, and this is what trips up most business owners. It all seems so fast and easy, but the reality is that an effective social media marketing campaign requires a clear strategy and diligent attention to making updates.

Before you dive into social media, review your budget and consider hiring a marketing professional. If there’s a high learning curve, if you want to establish several social media profiles simultaneously, or if you’re simply strapped for time, then it makes sense to hand these tasks off to someone else so you can focus on running your business.

5. Start Slowly and Build a Meaningful Presence.

A common mistake that business owners make is rushing to set up multiple social media profiles. Remember that you’ll have to spend some time with each social media network to learn how to use it, and then you’ll have to figure out how to best use it for marketing (most social media sites are built for socializing, not marketing). Running your own social media campaign won’t be difficult if you start slowly, master one social media network at a time, and build your campaigns over time.

Getting Started with Social Media Marketing

Scribizzy offers social media marketing services to small businesses that want to harness the power of social media to bring traffic to their websites and customers to their businesses. We can help you develop a social media marketing plan, we can create fully customized profiles for you, and we can even manage your campaigns for you. We also offer consultations and can help you navigate social media and coach you so that you can learn how to run your own campaign. Please contact us to learn more.

How to choose SEO keywords for your small business website.

The English language is incredible. There are hundreds of different word combinations that can be used to communicate a single idea. And every combination is a possible SEO keyword phrase for some website. Maybe yours.

So how do you decide which words and phrases to use when you’re optimizing your website to increase search engine traffic? Do you choose keywords with the highest search volume? The ones that you’re already using on your site or that are already drawing traffic? Do you pick keywords with the least competition?

All of these questions must be addressed through the course of developing a comprehensive SEO plan. But for a small business website, one question rises above the rest: Which search terms are your customers using?

SEO Keyword Choices

Putting together a proper SEO plan requires making sensible decisions about which keywords you’ll target and which ones you’ll ignore. Sounds easy, right?

Not so quick. As you conduct keyword research and start developing your ideas for an SEO plan, you’ll be faced with infinite choices regarding which keywords you should include in your SEO campaign. Many (too many) website managers make their decisions in a rash manner, often without giving any consideration to why one keyword might be a better choice over another.

I’ve actually witnessed small business owners and bloggers tackle the decision-making process in an arbitrary, freewheeling manner. So I thought I’d put together an article that addresses some of the considerations that should be involved in making choices among all of your keyword options. And chances are, you’ll have a lot of options.

Synonyms

A synonym is a word that has the exact same meaning as some other word. If you want to find synonyms galore, just open a thesaurus (or visit an online thesaurus). Look up the word buy and you’ll find out that one of its synonyms is purchase. This raises the question: Should you optimize your site with the word buy or with the word purchase? You’ll find that the synonym dilemma arises for every single SEO project. The ongoing challenge in the keyword selection process often involves deciding between synonyms and synonymous phrases.

Search Volume

Search volume refers to the number of searches a term receives in a given time period. For example, the word buy was searched about 68 million times on Google in January. Purchase only received about 6.1 million searches. Still, that’s a lot. A knee-jerk reaction might be to decide that you’ll use the word buy in your SEO because it gets more searches. But there are many cases in which it’s much better to target a keyword with a lower search volume (although you don’t want to go too low!).

Competition

If buy gets more searches than purchase, then more people probably use the word buy. Therefore, it will probably have greater competition, which means you have to work harder (publish more content, obtain more links) to see results. That’s something to think about. Maybe you could optimize for purchase and get a big chunk of the 6.1 million searchers within a few months whereas you could spend years optimizing for buy and never see a single visitor as a result of your efforts. Don’t worry about which keywords get the most searches. Worry about which keywords will draw your customers and which ones will realistically lead to success.

Customers

The best way to start narrowing down your list of synonyms is to determine which words your customers use when referring to your products. For example, many musicians refer to their recorded music as “records.” They’ll say something like “We made the record for our fans.” But fans don’t search for records. They don’t buy or purchase records. So records are not what music lovers are looking for. The fans — the customers — the searchers — are looking for music. They want to buy or purchase music. Or songs.

Existing Keyword Traffic

Let’s say you sell music on your website. Should you optimize for purchase music or buy music? If you find that you’re already drawing a few visitors every month for the term purchase music but you’ve never drawn a single visitor for the term buy music, then you might be better off working on the former term. Whenever possible, leverage keywords that are already drawing traffic! For example, if purchase music brought in five visitors and you find your site ranked on page 35 of the search engine results pages, you should optimize and try to move up a few pages. Then, you should keep optimizing and try to move up a lot more pages.

Reader-Friendly

Some potential keywords and phrases don’t lend themselves to written content. This includes odd phrases that people will enter in search engines but that they wouldn’t normally say or write while communicating with other people. It also includes keywords that are misspelled (many searchers misspell their search terms). Keep in mind that when you finish your research and finalize your keyword selections, they will have to be implemented on your website, which means they will be written into the text. If you want the language on your site to be readable and correct, then you want to choose keywords and phrases that are natural and reader-friendly, otherwise your content comes across as awkward and unnatural.

Narrow the Search

Let’s face it, there’s a whole lot of music out there. You can get more specific about which music you’re selling. If you’re a full-service music store, you’d do well to choose a bunch of keywords with each one targeting a different genre or artist. You could optimize for purchase rock music or purchase pop music. Sometimes you’ll see better results optimizing for a larger pool of keywords that are highly specific and that have less competition.

Long-Tail Keywords

How specific can you get? I already mentioned artists and genres. What about format? Do you sell music downloads? Maybe instead of purchase rock music you should optimize for download rock music. As you add more words to your keyword phrase, it becomes a long-tail keyword, which is simply a keyword phrase that consist of several words. These can be effective when used thoughtfully.

SEO is About Asking the Right Questions

When you start compiling a list of possible keywords, your head might spin. It’s truly mind-boggling how many words and phrases can be used to search for one product or service. As you go through your list of keyword possibilities, avoid making arbitrary or meaningless selections as much as possible. Try to cite a reason for every decision you make. When you eliminate or add a keyword to your list, make sure you have a clear reason.

As you go through the process, asking the right questions is essential to informing your decisions. Think about each keyword and determine how many ways that term might be used by people searching for it. Are they more likely to be looking for your offering or is it possible the search term is even more applicable to something you don’t sell at all:

• If I optimize for download rock music, I might draw searchers who are looking for free downloads.
• If I optimize for purchase rock music, I might get visitors looking to buy sheet music or CDs.
• Should I optimize for buy rock songs online?

Sometimes you end up back at square one, and you have to go back and do more research. But it’s worth it. If you’re going to invest in a serious SEO campaign, you want to get the research and keyword selection right the first time.

Here’s a summary of considerations to keep in mind when making SEO keyword selections:

• Synonyms: Do you have a nice, long list of keyword possibilities to choose from?
• Search Volume: How many searches are conducted for each of the potential keywords?
• Competition: Which keywords are highly competitive in the SEO field?
• Customers: Which keywords do your customers use when looking for your products and services?
• Existing Keyword Traffic: Are you already seeing low volumes of traffic for some of these keywords?
• Reader-Friendly: Lean toward keywords that are correctly spelled and fit naturally into written communications.
• Narrow the Search: To attract customers looking for exactly what you offer, narrow your language. Be specific.
• Long-Tail Keywords: Be more specific. Use a larger number of keywords that have lower search volumes and less competition.
• Finally: Ask the right questions. Make sure you have a reason for each elimination or selection from your list.

SEO is a tedious process, especially the research and keyword selection phases. But once you get past the nitty-gritty grind of poring over lists of words, phrases, and statistics, you get to move to the next step: keyword implementation. And that’s when SEO gets fun.

Online marketing levels the playing field for small businesses

When I was a kid, there was this little Mexican restaurant in town. It sat right next to a movie theater, and it was a hot spot. Those folks made a mean burrito! Kids always stopped in on their way home from school for nachos, and whenever we went shopping or to the movies, we’d grab a bite. It was cheap, tasty, and popular. My favorite dish was their wet bean burrito. Delicious!

But apparently, this little restaurant wasn’t popular enough for the owners of the shopping center, because in 2003, when a big-box store wanted to move in and take over the space, both the restaurant and the movie theater (plus several other small businesses) got knocked out to make way for a chain store.

Rather than relocate and start over from scratch, the restaurant owners closed their doors and walked away after being in business for 30 years.

Missing Main Street

This is not an unusual story. Big businesses are constantly kicking the little guys off the map.

There was a time when every town and city in America was home to small businesses run by hard-working and self-sufficient people — people who possessed an entrepreneurial spirit. They ran restaurants much like the one I just told you about. They owned grocery stores, cafés, and bookstores. But in recent decades, big businesses have slowly been taking over, eliminating the mom-and-pop businesses that defined main-street America.

Nobody believed that a chain of coffee shops could drive community cafés out of business, but Starbuck’s proved it could be done. And because ambitious executives are hooked on exponential growth and thrive on eliminating or overtaking their competition, corporate growth has proven that no industry is safe from its reach.

After all, bigger businesses have the advantage. They have more money to spend on research and development, marketing, and personnel. They can even use their infinite resources for lobbying, investing in legislation and supporting politicians and bills that advance their agendas or opposing those that would give better leverage to the little guys.

Small Business Concerns

They say some industries are safe from corporate competition. I don’t believe it. If there’s a way to make money, the big businesses are going to want to get in on the action eventually.

If you’re a small business owner or if you’re thinking about starting your own business, these are real concerns.

Can you go up against bigger or more established businesses? Even if you can compete now, will corporate interests move in on your turf a few years down the road? Should you just get a regular job and forget about it? Or can smart online marketing strategies save your business?

Small Business is Alive and Well

The truth is that small business is alive and well. It just looks different than it did ten or twenty years ago. It’s more and more difficult to find a grocery store owned by people rather than shareholders, but there is a whole world of entrepreneurs. And that world is the wild, wild web.

Remember that little Mexican restaurant I told you about, the one that went out of business in 2003? That restaurant recently got itself a Facebook page. Sounds odd, I know. Why would you set up a Facebook page for a restaurant that has been out of operation for almost a decade?

Maybe the owners are thinking of reopening and are testing the market. Maybe they’re just waxing nostalgic. I have no idea, but what I do know is that they already have hundreds of followers, a pretty good indication that their little restaurant may be gone, but their customers have certainly not forgotten them.

21st Century Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneurial spirit will never die. Someone, somewhere will always find a way to outsmart the big guys and either beat them at their own game or build a brand new game.

In 1999, when big corporations already had their arms wrapped around shoe manufacturing, a little company named Zappos hit the scene. It was unheard of. Why would anyone go up against Nike or Manolo? But Zappos found that by skirting marketing and customer service models that big businesses favored and by operating on the web, they could in fact succeed and compete effectively. Less than ten years after it was founded, Zappos was sold to Amazon, reportedly for over a billion dollars.

Hoards of independent-minded people have figured out ways to make money using online marketing. Some of them employ tactics that may be questionable (are they really selling anything?) but most online entrepreneurs just want to offer a decent product or service that brings value to their customers. They want to run a real business, and they want to succeed.

Many of these people make a living from home. Some of them work in their pajamas. Others are working from their couches or backyards. A few of them don’t even realize they’re running a business. They’re blogging for fun, and one day someone offers them some money for something, and next thing you know, they turned a profit. That’s business, and this is still America.

Online Marketing Strategies

But it’s an online America, a globally connected America. And what’s missing on the game board are small businesses that are doing business the old-fashioned way (with a brick and mortar store or an in-person service) while simultaneously harnessing the newfangled marketing advantages that the Internet offers.

Let’s face it; some things just can’t be done online (home repairs, haircuts, dining, just to name a few). So, as big businesses move in on these industries, traditional businesses need to use the web to compete more effectively.

If a little restaurant that closed its doors ten years ago can use the Internet to reclaim hundreds of its former customers without even having a business anymore, then what can your business do with the web?

Scribizzy helps small businesses succeed online. Visit our online marketing page to learn more about how we can help you market your business on the web.