Small Business Website - How to get the most from your Website

Websites are now a must have for any business, big or small. No matter what line of business you are in your customers almost always expect you to have a website and so if you don't it can introduce doubt into their mind about your business. No one wants that.

However before you rush of to start creating your website, it really makes sense to consider how you are going to use your website to enhance your business rather than just tick the box that says "Yes, I've got a website".

I'm not going to tell you what your website should look like or what it should contain. It's your business and you know it best. However I am going to suggest a few guidelines that you might want to consider before launching into building your website.

The first thing you need to be clear about it what is going to be the purpose of your website.

Broadly speaking business websites fall into one of three categories. They are either lead generation, e-commerce or information providers.

The problem I see with many small business websites (and some of the not so small one as well!) is that they try to be a mix of all three and the message gets lost. So to give a clear message from your website, you need to have a clear idea in your mind which category your website will belong in.

Small Business Website Categories

Lead Generation

The whole point of a lead generation website is that is gathers contacts of potential customers. The site does not try to sell you anything. In fact, it gives things away in exchange for contact details. The common "give aways" are free tips, reports, product demos etc.

E-Commerce

E-Commerce website are purely about selling your product and giving your customer the ability to buy it online. Amazon is a great example of an e-commerce site.

Information Only

These sites don't try to sell you anything or gather any contact details. They are purely there for providing information to customers. You might go for an information only site if all you wanted to do was to tell your customers something about your business, For example: if you ran a small shop and whilst you didn't sell anything online you might want to tell prospective customers where you are, what times you are open and what you sell.

Okay. I know what category my Small Business Website belongs in. Now what?

Well before you even start to plan out what pages you are going to have or what they will look like and what they will say, I strongly urge you to get an understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO). I'm not saying that you need to be an expert but if you have a grasp of how it works then you will be well placed to start planning and building website (or talking to someone who is going to this for you).

Just getting to grips with keywords and link structures will be a tremendous help when you start to plan out your website. Don't hand this all over to someone who says they can build your website and do all the SEO for you. There is nothing wrong with handing it over to someone who's better qualified but you owe it to yourself and your business to at least understand the basic of SEO so that you can check what they are doing.

There is lots of freely available information on the web about SEO. Some of it is out of date and some is just wrong. If you want to get started quickly, try listening to my free course. It's an audio tape and it's broken down into five easy to listen to lessons.