In my last post, I discussed that one of the 4 components that every small business needs is a dynamic website. As a bonus addition, I asked Dean Collins and Justin Roberts from the premium graphic design and web solutions company, Big Click Studios, why they think every small business needs a website.
They replied, “Whether you’ve got five employees – or fifty – a website can be a critical business tool for small business. While the scope of your site will depend on your specific needs, there are some big benefits to establishing an online presence, starting with being where your customers are.
With a few exceptions, chances are that your customers spend a significant portion of their day – or at least their week – on the internet and most importantly, search engines are the way most people find new sites, and the way that most businesses find new sources for products and services.
Unlike other forms of marketing, your website has the potential to be a living, breathing thing. Provided you have content management capabilities built into your site, you can update it any time. This can enable you to be extremely current and respond to changes in the market as they happen.”
And not just where your customers are – but also where your competition almost certainly is. “Chances are that your competitors are already online. If they’re not, it’s a fantastic opportunity for you to seize market share. If you’re thinking of building a website, make sure you do your research and find out what your competitors are doing. Think about what you would do differently – and why a potential customer would choose your website over theirs.”
Price Point with Websites
I asked the guys about price. Does a website package have to be really expensive?
“Your website is one of the best investments you will ever make – and can be extremely cost effective. While you do pay for quality web design, web development and Search Engine Optimisation consulting services, a website certainly doesn’t require the same enormous investment as TV or radio advertising, and it also has the potential to deliver very low cost leads over time.
Plus, websites are flexible. You can start out small – and expand your website as your budget expands. And by investing in strategic initiatives like SEO and online advertising – or by registering with the right online directories – you can very easily and cost effectively drive users to your site.
Importantly, your website is completely measurable. By integrating proprietary analysis tools, or free software like Google Analytics into your site, you can determine who is going to your site, how long they’re staying for, which pages they’re visiting, and what they do while they are there. This enables you to discover quite in-depth information about your target audience, and determine how they are relating to you. You can also take advantage of this information to optimise your website over time.”
DIY Website Updating
So being a web designer is one thing, but could most of us small business owners look after our website ourselves?
“Provided your website is well designed and structured in the first place – you should be able to manage it independently, in house. This means you don’t need to be tied to an advertising or marketing agency for ongoing updates or promotions. Instead, you can assign ongoing marketing duties to your team, or take care of them yourself.
As well as reducing costs, this can make things more efficient and fast-paced – very important for small business.
Your Website’s Role in Customer Service
The guys went on to point out how important a website is in terms of your customer service effort as well.
“A website can enable you to service the needs of your customers – any time of the day or night. People can easily find out about your products and services – without having to call you or request more information. You can also publish regular updates to your site, and can also set up members-only areas, where existing customers can get exclusive updates that make them feel valued.
Importantly, your website can also function as an effective way to qualify customers as part of the sales process. Once customers have visited your website and reviewed your information, they will know whether or not your business is right for their needs. This means that when they contact you, they are already pre-qualified sales opportunities. In addition, by encouraging users to submit their details into online forms or tools, you can capture their information for ongoing marketing.
If appropriate, your website can even become a self-functioning sales tool. By integrating online purchasing tools, you can easily close the loop on the sales cycle – without you or any of your staff having to be directly or immediately involved.”
Remember, your website is like the shop front window used to be – the initial and therefore most important impression you can make with a customer. The majority of people leave a website before they have been on it for ten seconds so if you that first impression, you might have lost them forever.
Do you agree with Justin and Dean’s opinions about small business websites? Please let us know in the comments below.
Are you looking for a website for your business? Contact Big Click Studios for an obligation free quote.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Super article full of spot on advice for small businesses!
Gday Deborah,
Thanks for the nice comment. Glad you liked the article.
Nick
Rather than go to a design house, I recommend that small business use resources such as Google Sites or wordpress and develope there own site. This forces the small business to really think about what they want their internet presence to do and how it will integrate with their marketing strategy. Every small business person needs to have an understanding about internet marketing, outsourcing a small business website is not a good idea in my opinion to get you to that point. There are so many good tools around these day the biggest investment any small business person has to make is their time.
Gday Bob,
Thanks for your comment. As someone who has made their own websites from scratch but with no experience or expertise in the past, I think I would actually have (with hindsight) gotten someone to look at it for me if I went through it all again.
Then again, I have made enough horrible mistakes and had enough awful websites now to have learnt from experience a bit!
Thanks for contributing Bob.
Nick
We are on the same wavelength, as you point out a hands on experience gives small business people the opportunity to learn and self correct through feedback we get in order to improve our web presence.
I’ve learned so much about building a dynamic online presence for my business with the building of my hyperlocal Central Coast real estate blog ( http://www.ccrer.tv ) and its links to facebook and twitter and using it to promote my core business which is web video production.
@Bob Fitzgerald Your websites are a perfect example of how small business folk are more than capable of setting up and running a website. However, you will never understand the intricacies of beautiful design and extensible (without being verbose) development, given the layout and appearance of your sites.
I’m glad your sites are working for you… but I really don’t think you should recommend other businesses to NOT seek the professional (and highly capable) services of design houses (such as Big Click).
Hey Josh, I’m all for professional services. However I meet many Central Coast small and micro business that are really unhappy with their “professionally built” web sites and their experience with web developers.
Its great that your company and others like you are delivering websites that produce results for satisfied clients.
@Bob Fitzgerald I don’t have any affiliation with Big Click, but I do work in the industry and I know the quality work that’s being produced by their studio. I too have seen the “professional” websites that are generated by some of the other companies out there selling their wares. I’m disgusted at the investment these companies are stooged into making (at times).
On the other hand, a lot of small businesses (even some large ones) expect to get a fully-functional, unique, beautiful design for $995 (because that’s what their friend got). It’s a double-edged sword.
The one commonality we’re arguing on, is that websites are an important organism in the marketing of one’s business. The greater dynamicity built in to the website, the greater the amount of user interaction (assuming you’re getting traffic), and hopefully the more memorable your product.
Great interview Nick.
I might be biased here since we develop websites, but i don’t think self-building is really a credible option for most people.
While some people have a natural design talent, and skill set to realise it, most self-designed websites are pooly developed either in terms of accessibility, code quality, or search engine performance.
Powerful systems such as Wordpress, with a vast array of great themes available, can provide a stable and relatively well coded platform for budget businesses to get started with. They’re even quite good with Search Engine Optimisation.
However, even a good Wordpress site is, by nature, quite heavy in terms of overhead. With Google concentrating on site overhead (the amount of code it takes to do what the site does) more than ever, ad-hoc functionality will begin to come up second best to purpose built, truly optimised code.
I guess what i’m saying is that even if you can make it “look great”, if the code that makes it doesn’t look just as elegant, it’s going to cause it’s own list of issues.
@Joshua – i agree that many companies are paying too much for poor development. Paying money doesn’t guarantee anything. I still see sites built by huge website development companies that don’t adhere to basic functionality practices (ie, doesn’t work on a Mac).
Just my thoughts.
Rob.
Gday Rob,
I can actually (sadly) go one better on that front. A business which contacted me about doing some social media strategy for them had a fairly impressive website but I couldnt see it on my Mac either because they hadnt built that basic functionality into their site. What business were they in? Web Design…
@Nick – oh yes, i can’t tell you how many developers’ websites i could not use on a Mac. Indeed some recent contacts fall into that category also. Companies who had grown on the back of Government contracts no less…
I think accessibility is such an important issue, if people can’t view your website, then what’s the point! It’s why we don’t advocate the use of Flash anymore.
Occasionally i think that can be the undoing of self-designed websites too. Many don’t realise that the amount of work that goes into cross-browser compatibility. We (and many other developers) have significant resources for cross browser testing with virtual machines running all different web browsers, and while we can’t ensure everyone is covered, we do ensure an extremely high rate of success.
Of course we only provide limited support for Internet Explorer v6, and no support for browsers earlier than that, as there’s an investment vs reward argument. We’d be happy to do it, but the amount of work to make it so isn’t usually something many clients are prepared to pay for, so we stick to the major ones.
Anyway, i’m getting a little carried away here. Great post, very thought provoking.
Rob