As a small business owner, you probably have a lot on your plate. You are either too busy with clients’ work, or too busy looking for new clients. Taking the time to building and maintain a website for your business seems like it would just get in the way of doing to actual work that earns you money.

But whether you’re a tradie, a boutique, small retail shop or a restaurant owner having a website for your business is a vital part of running a 21st centrury business and, importantly, for gaining new customers.

If you can invest the time in reading this post, I’ll walk you through some of the reasons you need a website, how to go about creating one and what tools you can use – to get one live without ever touching a single line of code.

Why your local business needs a website

Follow the crowd

To put it bluntly, everyone is online. The economy is digital and, while products and services are often delivered in person, people search online for local services and businesses to use.

In Australia there will be 18 million smartphone users some time in 2019. That’s getting close to 90% of the population and, according to Google “82% of smartphone users use a search engine when looking for a local business.”

What that means for you and your business, is that when someone is looking for your services, if you don’t show up on their smartphone, you are effectively invisible. Ouch! Have you ever had the experience of being on the fringe of a conversation, and the others who are talking are basically ignoring your presence? It’s not good, is it…?

You’re the pro, show it

Because searching online is a daily habit for most of us it makes sense that your business should put its best foot forward and be visible in the digital world.

Have you ever looked for a service online, been confronted by a horrible webpage and thought “this looks dodgy?” I know I have.

First impressions matter and, for businesses, having your own website can make a powerful statement of professionalism, creating instant credibility.

Great Expectations

This is a simple one. There is a new generation of consumers and potential customers, who have used the Internet and World Wide Web since childhood. It’s not a small group. It now includes almost everyone under the age of 40.

They, and the rest of us, too, expect businesses to have an online presence. Whether that’s a social media page, a claimed and updated Google Business Page, or a website, the minimum expectation is that your business is easily discoverable online.

The attitude really is, if a business does not have an online presence, then they can’t really be serious about attracting new customers.

New customers & growth

Word-of-mouth will always be a powerful way of gaining new customers for local businesses.

Having your own business website can further enhance your word-of-mouth reputation while also providing a source of new customers outside your existing client base.

Google Search is an important source of growth, and to feature on search having your own website is a must.

What to do?

So, hopefully I’ve now got you thinking. and you are open to the possibility that a website is what your business is missing.

From my own past experiences of working on websites for small businesses, here are some things to consider before getting stuck in.

Define purpose and goals

Before lifting a finger, know who your target audience is and what you want your website to do for that audience.

Do you want it to educate about your services and encourage people to contact you? Do you want it to show off your work? Are you expecting to sell directly from your website? These are important questions which inform the goals and requirements for your website. Write down the 2-3 priority goals for your website.

Example:

When a user visits my business website I want them to be able to:

1. Understand my products & services so they know what I do
2. Know where my business is located & the areas I serve so they know if I am available to them
3. Contact my business to get a quote so that I can find out who potential customers are

Write it down

People often want to jump straight in and get designing a website. Design is important but it only enhances the main element of your website: the content.

Create a text document and write down what you want/need your website to say. Write the text, distill your key message and share the document with other people, ideally from your target audience, to get feedback.

If a word document reads well and makes sense, then this often translates well onto a website.

Some tips on writing content:

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short, but articles long. If you find you’re writing long and wordy paragraphs, finish the article, then come back to it after a day or two, and review the sentence and paragraph length, splitting things where you can. Short sentence and paragraphs with a long article make it easier for the reader to keep reading.
• Include interesting content. Don’t tout your wares unthinkingly. Think about what a visitor is really looking for when they come to each page, and address that expectation. If you can successfully address that expectation, you build trust in the visitor and they may become a buyer.
• Include action directives. Scattered gently amongst your interesting content, your website should include language that encourages the user to take an action (which should be part of your goals) – these are called Calls To Action (CTA) e.g. “Learn More”, ”Contact Us”, ”Get A Quote”, ”Get 50% Off – Sign Up Today.”
• Use short headlines to separate different sections of a page.

Take Pictures

Pictures (and video for that matter) can enhance the content and experience of a website. But, often, when building websites small businesses realise they don’t have many images that can be used to populate their pages.

You know your products and services better than anyone but to sell them it’s a good idea to build a catalogue of your great work. So, for example, if you’re in the building trade take pictures of work previously completed, or if you’re a shop owner take pictures of your latest window display and team.

• You don’t need a pro (although, if you have the budget, that helps). Your smartphone’s camera can be a regular tool in your day to day work.
• When taking a photo, look through the viewfinder (or screen) and look at what is in the background. Get rid of background distractions before you press the shutter button.
• Make taking images a daily habit.
• If you have a company logo, make sure you have high quality versions of the logo.

Choose a relevant domain name

A domain name is basically the name of your website e.g. google.com, smallbusiness.com. It is your calling card and an important part of your brand.

You should try to have a domain name that matches your business name so that it is simple for the average punter to understand that the domain name belongs to your business.

There are thousands of online tools to let you quickly check if a domain name is available or not – like this one from name.com. If, for example, you can’t acquire a .com.au domain that matches your business name try alternative domains like .net.au, .com .net, .io etc

How do I build a website?

Once you have a clear idea of what you need your website to do and the content that will be on the website, you just need to find a tool that can help you design and build your website. At the most basic level, there are three things your website needs:

1. hosting (where on the internet your website lives)
2. a domain name (the address of your website recognisable to users)
3. html pages (pages of content)

Tools

Luckily, today, there are services which take care of all three of these tasks and allow you to create a website without touching any code.

These services allow you to buy hosting for your website, design pages and manage the content on a regular basis. Below are a few user friendly and cheap options for non-techies.

• Squarespace
• Shopify
• Wix
• WordPress

WordPress websites

WordPress is one of the world’s leading blogging platforms. There are themes available to give your website its own look and feel, and creating content can be quite easy. However, WordPress is an extensive system and may need some more advanced expertise to enable custom functionality.

WordPress is more extensible and flexible that template-driven sites like Wix, and that is why is is the platform of choice for approximately 1 website in 3, across all websites in the world. It even runs 1 in 7 of the top 100 sites.

Whatever tool you use to create your website, get comfortable with it as updating your website shouldn’t be a scary task.

Test

It is important to test your website fully before promoting it to customers. Have family, friends and customers take some time to go through the site and test it. Be open to critical feedback.

Given most users view the web on mobile today it is particularly important that the experience looks and works well on your mobile phone. Make sure you test your website, both, on mobile and desktop.

Promote

Now, you have your website and are ready for it to be seen by the big bad world, what you need to do is promote it. There are countless ways of doing this online, here are a few suggestions:

• If you use social media make sure you let your followers know about your new website.
• Paid-for advertising. If your budget allows and the goal is suitable then you can pay for promoting your website with services like Facebook, Google, Linkedin.
• Some of the website building tools mentioned previously have “Marketing” features which can guide you step by step on how to market and promote your website.

Maintain

The final task is to make sure the content on your website is up to date and relevant. Don’t put all the effort in to set up your website and leave it to wither.

Out of date content can be a big turn off for potential customers and detract from the professional feeling you’ve created. Try to set aside time regularly (how regular is up to you) to update text, images and offers on your website.