Small Business Website Do’s and Don’ts
A well-designed website is a key to the success of small businesses. It is a tool for showing off their business through the internet and getting people interested in doing business with the company. But what the Business Website should and should not have is another type of thing that should be considered, because that can have good or bad effects on the business.
The website should be mobile-friendly and have better search results and maybe a better way to get the target audience and what small business websites do’s and don’ ts.
1. What businesses are classified as small?
A small business is a privately owned company with around less than 100 and or less than 1500 employees and getting around $750k to $38mill. Also, if the said small company is a partnership or sole proprietorship, another thing to note is that what determines a small business can be different from country to country.
They can really determine how many employees they have or just what their average annual receipts say, but maybe that can also determine how big that company may get.
2. How do small businesses advertise?
We all know small Businesses advertise, and most of them do, but how do they advertise to get them more attention and possible customers? Small businesses advertise in many ways, but a common method is using social media or any online. A business owned by millennials tends to advertise to younger people and older people to be interested in their business and be clients.
Since some small businesses that are owned by millennials tend to advertise in more ways and platforms to get their business out there, platforms that some small businesses use are but are not limited to Facebook, which is a popular social media platform, YouTube, which is also a popular platform that many people use around the world.
Some Small businesses invest to be advertised in Google Search. But all in all, Small businesses advertise in ways they can and do what they can to get attention and more customers so their business can live on.
3. Why do some small businesses not have a website?
Some small businesses business owners do not have a website, but why don’t they? Well, it’s most likely for their own reason. Those reasons can be that they think the yellow pages may be enough, but most the only people using yellow pages nowadays are older people, or Not even understanding how a website can help their business and help the customers know more about the small business or know how to contact the business.
But not having a website may have long-term negative effects as you may think you’re doing good with the customers you keep getting, from either the same customers coming or people just plainly recommending for people to go to your business by word.
Even though a website can cost you a lot to be made for you or to maintain and stay up and online but not much reason to have some website for your small business if making a website and having someone make one for you was super cheap. Those small businesses without a website really have no reason not to having a website, and it’s not like WordPress and WordPress professionals exist to help a business to have this website made.
4. How much do small businesses spend on advertising?
We all know businesses got to spend on advertising, and this advertising will, of course, help the business to get recognized and get attention. Still, it does come down to the price/cost of the advertising from what money the small business has.
The percentage for spending from your revenues to go towards advertising should be up to 7- 8% (if not a little more). The money would have to be around less than 5 million dollars for advertising/marketing and a set percentage for margins.
5. How effective is a website/online advertising for small businesses?
Website advertising and online advertising are way more effective ways to advertise than the older advertising methods since we got more and more people online and print advertising is old.
The advertising can be personalized to some point and track and follow the user while browsing and searching online and forgot what they had researched about some time ago but abandoned/ left. But this tracking can be creepy and whatnot, so it may be best not to have the ads heavily shown to the user (as in every ad space in your ad).
But nowadays, we don’t really click on these ads, maybe due to being afraid that it may lead us to a website that would auto-download malware or have suspicious stuff on it, or at the very least, that is my take on it as to why this website advertising is not a whole lot effective.
But the advertising that does catch my eye is the type that is video advertising, as I can see and hear what they are advertising, and in the case of YouTube. They can link to their website and contribute or take in the tracking advertisements for website ads and video ads.
6. What are the causes of website advertising failures?
Now there can be things/factors that can cause The advertising for the website to fail and so would soon have your website fail and not get full attention as you would want it to.
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF WEBSITE ADVERTISING FAILURES?
There are so many reasons why a website advertisement fails. However, to simplify the discussion, let us group these causes into two categories: (A) Business Aspect (B) Technical Aspect.
Business Aspect
The website created by a professional expert will fail if business concepts are not factored into the website. One aspect of the business is marketing, and it is a must that marketing concepts, specifically the C’s of Marketing, should be well thought of when creating a website. What are the C’s of Marketing: Company, Customers, Competitors, Climate, Collaboration, and Costing.
Creating the website, the company’s culture, expectations, wants, and needs of the target customers, competition, market and economic climate should all be carefully analyzed to match the website’s design. Otherwise, the website advertisement would totally fail.
Technical Aspect
The website may have totally analyzed the marketing aspect, but the website will definitely fail if the technical aspect is not applied. Some of the samples of technical failures are as follows:
1. Poor website design
2. Not optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
3. Not optimized for Google
4. Hiring unqualified web designers
5. Not promoting the website
6. Broken Links and Pages
7. Website Development with Poor Menu and Structure
8. Not user friendly
9.Not a friendly website
10.Not enough website visitors
7. What should be on the website
There are things for your website that should be on your website to make it look and feel good for customers to look around your website and its web pages to check it all for what they offer the customers.
But a clear description of who you are and what you and your business are about and what you offer (also including products if you sell products as well) and don’t forget to have your web address be short-ish and not long will be easier for users.
A Great Navigation around Your website to other parts of your website with links (or linked buttons or pictures) goes to the important parts of your website and its web pages to help people find what they are looking for. Another good thing to add is an easy way to find your business’s contact information to get in touch with you and your business.
Also, your Website should be easier to search on a search engine with SEO basics, so people will be able to stumble onto your website way easier than they would without it.
Make sure your website has as fresh and new stuff as you can (with quality) and have a secure platform, so then your website isn’t hacked, and bad things to your website and business don’t happen. The design of your website should be user-friendly and easy to read, as in short paragraphs, bullet points, highlights, to important words. Also, make sure the page titles are correct and that the website is optimized for search engine optimization SEO and optimized for mobile devices.
8. What should not be on the Website
You also there are some things you don’t want to put on your website as it really can kill your website, or have it got low attention, and those factors that do this to your website are:
· Automatic Sound/Music: having automatic music is just a bad idea from there start as, like, whoever wants music to play the moment they click/tap on a website link and it plays out loud. If you’re at your work, or in public, and or at a party, and you clicked the website that has this automatic sound/music playing, it may be embarrassing or trouble for you.
· Splash Pages: These Splash pages may have been a good idea some time ago, but these Pages that show up before the actual website does can get annoying. These Splash pages show you a screen with some info and a button to continue to the actual website homepage.
· Pop-ups: These are some of the most annoying things for you to see happen on a website as they interrupt you from what you are doing on the website and why you are there and can have users want to leave. But if there has to be a pop-up, then best have that pop up for a good reason because no one likes them, and everyone hates them.
· No-Navigation: self-explanatory, but if your website is tough to navigate and find what the user needs to find, they need some bar to bring them to where they need or want to be. The user needs to easily find the place they want to go on your website and come back, but without this navigation, it is hard.
· Flash Intros: Even though this may be cool, it be only “cool’ once, and then it’s just annoying as pop-ups and makes users want to leave.
· Website Made from Flash: Even though flash is nice, making a whole website out of flash isn’t a great idea as a few people may execute this with perfection. But nowadays, flash is a dying tool, a dying thing to use for websites and whatnot, and there isn’t much to save flash for everyone and every browser.
· Hyperlink “Click Here”: Even if this is a nice thing to have, just naming it to “Click Here” doesn’t tell them what it does or where it goes to but naming the hyperlink is better than just saying click here.
9. What are other factors affecting the success of a website?
The other factors affecting the website’s success can be categorized into internal factors and External Factors. And those extra do‘s and do not.
Internal factors
The business owner’s attitude. This includes the owner’s desire to keep going no matter the challenges the business encounters. The openness to changes around him will highly affect the success of the website.
The budget for maintenance and improvement of the website is another factor that can affect success. They may have good web developers or a web design agency, but the website will fail if they do not have a budget to finance their operations.
External Factors
The economy, which may be beyond the company’s control, can actually affect the website’s success. If the economy is down, the business will go down too. Thus it may not have a budget to maintain and improve the website.
A successful business will always have a great website coupled with near to perfect online exposure. It’s just a matter of planning and doing it right!
