If you’ve got a small business, you’ll probably want a website. Many consumers now have a broadband Internet connection and leave their computers on all the time. It’s a lot easier for them to do a simple search on the Internet than to locate their Yellow Pages, flip through them to find the heading where your business is listed.

And, even if they did remember where their Yellow Pages book is, and found the heading where your business is listed, would your ad stand out? Would it have a description of your services or products, a map of your location, along with your current hours, and your phone number and email address?

You can add all this information, and more, to a simple small business website.

So, having a website can lead to more business–and more profit. After all, a basic purpose of a small business website is to allow a potential customer to find you fast and call you first.

=== Building a Small Business Website ===

So, let’s suppose that you want to work with someone to build your small business website. How do you choose a good website development provider?

If you use one of the major search engines to find a provider who can do “small business website development” you’ll probably come up with hundreds of sites. Some sites will provide instructions for you to develop your own website. Other sites will offer to develop your site for you.

Most business owners are pretty well occupied with the day-to-day process of managing their business. They don’t want to learn a totally new skill.

If you are in this category, you’ll want someone else to develop your website. But, there are still lots of choices.

After using a search engine to find a “small business website development” provider, you’ll see sites that promise inexpensive or economical development. Some sites offer development for under $200 while others offer development for under $100 plus $10 a month for hosting.

Sure, some of these rock bottom prices don’t include much more than a single page site. And there are add on services like an online merchant account (for selling products on the web), extra web space (for more pages), increased bandwidth (for more accesses and downloading), domain name registration, email addresses, and so on.

So, the actual price for your small business website development effort will depend on the purpose for your site. And, once you decide on a purpose, you will negotiate with the website development provider for all the features that support your purpose.

=== Your Website Must Be Found in the Search Engines ===

Now, here is the real catch. You can get a very pretty website from a number of providers. But, the question is: “Can your small business website be found when a potential customer is searching for services?”

I live near Royal Oak, Michigan in Oakland County. If I needed to find a furnace repair company I might use a search engine and look for a “royal oak furnace repair” company, or even an “oakland county furnace repair” company.

If my back was hurting, I might look for a “royal oak chiropractor” for help.

If I don’t know the name of a particular business, I’ll search using a generic term that describes the type of business or service I’m seeking.

Now you should see that a goal of your small business website is to be found when someone does a generic search for a local business that offers the goods or services you provide.

One purpose of your website is, after all, to allow potential customers to find you fast and call you first. If your website doesn’t work hard to attract new customers and add to your bottom line, your money for website development was not well spent.

=== Good Search Engine Placement is an Ongoing Cost ===

Good placement in the search engines requires attention nearly every month. If someone is not updating and fine-tuning your website monthly, it’s likely it will not be at the top of the search engines. While your website may look nice and give you a good feeling, it will not be working hard for your business like it should.

I spoke with a local chiropractor about his existing website. He indicated he thought it was at the top of Google for his name and his business’ name. Yet, when I actually did the searches on Google, I found his site was not in the top 100 sites for either search phrase he mentioned.

Yes, he had a fine website. But nothing was being done to promote his website. His website needed fine-tuning to emphasize certain keyword phrases and it needed incoming links from other websites. Both of these activities require an ongoing effort.

So, do not think that just because you have a small business website that it is working hard for you. Just like any other employee, you have to keep paying month after month for it to be productive.

So, along with simple website development, you should ensure that ongoing efforts will be made to enhance the placement of your site in the search engines. And you should keep track every month of where your site is found in the major search engines.

This way, potential customers searching the Internet actually will find your site fast and call you
first.

By: Bob Sherman

No matter how small a business is, today it is very common that the small business owners have their own website for the business. It is a good chance for the business to grow. Small business website is not necessarily a sophisticated website. A simple professional website will do.

Nevertheless, it is not easy to build a website and it does cost too much time, in addition you have to deal with codes that you might not be familiar with. However do not be skeptical because there is always a solution. There are so many web developers out there that are ready to help you and get their payment in return. There are as well website development tools that can help you although you have to deal with the codes yourself and spend most of your time on it.

Thinking about wasting money to employ others to do that for you might lead you to say No to having your small business website. And thinking about the hardship might as well put you into giving up the idea. With no certainty that having website will actually grow your business, you might only choose the safe way and back to the routine by running your business as usual.

What if there is a big chance to success? One example, if you own a small automotive spare parts store, wouldn’t it be amazing if you can draw a lot of prospects online? Prospects mean customers, customers mean sales, and sales mean profit, they are basic business terms. Even better, one time customers could mean life time customers. Internet has opened the door to unlimited opportunities. Starting an eBay online store will be a good step to begin with. By selling the spare parts online you are growing your chance to success. In this case a small business website can be very essential to ensure more success. With eBay you can build relationship with your prospects, and introduce your website, that may lead to future sale off eBay, which means you do not have to pay eBay for the cost.

That is only one of many possible ways. Small business website for your business is not to be underestimated. Building a website can be tough. But what if there is a tool that can help you save your time, help you avoid headache because of the codes, help you build a professional website? Would that be fabulous?

By: Andreas Jackson

In today’s society, it is extremely common and almost mandatory for a business to have its own website. Websites are a great way for businesses to provide customers with information, communicate with potential customers and generate new business. The most common reasons businesses drag their feet when it comes to building a websites is the lack of knowledge in the area of how to make a website. We are going to give you all the information needed to build an awesome website for your business, all within 5 minutes.

First off, the best and easiest way to build your own business website is by using a website builder. Website builders are programs that allow you to create a website without having any computer programming knowledge. Some website builders have a drag-and-drop feature, which allows users to pick a website “part”, like a background or text box, and simply drag it to a page of the website. Some of the most popular website builders are Wix.com and CityMax.com.

Follow these steps to create your business website in 5 minutes:

1. Create a free account at either website builder site, Wix.com or CityMax.com.

2. Choose “create a new site” and then find a template that best suits your needs. If you feel comfortable with create a website from scratch (no template) then you may do so.

3. Customize your template with text and pictures that relate to your business. Some of the most common elements included in business websites include: contact information, “About Us” page, e-commerce store and/or product and service listing. It is important to note that businesses are very different. Look at your competitor’s websites to see what they have on their website.

4. Change the colors and style of text and other elements to match the color scheme of your logo or business.

5. Once you have created a website to your liking, you will need to purchase a domain name. You can do this at GoDaddy.com. Find a domain name that relates to your business but hasn’t been purchased by another person.

6. Go to your website at the website builder and follow the directions that relate to pointing your site to your domain. Follow these simple steps and your website will then be attached to your domain. If you don’t want to purchase a domain (which are relatively cheap), you can use the domain name that the website builder generates for you.

These may seem like very general directions, but once you log on to the website builder you will see that building a business website is extremely easy. The best part about the whole process is that you can make your website as detailed as you want. You can choose to spend hours on it or literally get it up and launched in five minutes. The choice is yours- but remember, it is your business’s image you are dealing with.

By: Jason Kay

Companies that need to have an online presence will need to have business website design done. Many new entrepreneurs that start out, ask a friend that dabbles part-time on weekends with the Internet to create a page. At some point it becomes evident to most entrepreneurs that the company will need to have a definite and professional online presence. Ordering one of these can be a little more difficult than one may imagine. The principal reason for this is that many lay people do not understand the jargon that developers use.

Entrepreneurs do not necessarily have the time or inclination to try to understand why and how this process works. The developer will explain the options that are available with regard to different packages. When an entrepreneur understands how it will work and what it entails, it makes the decision to use the service provider much easier.

Entrepreneurs can browse the Internet and have a look at links to other companies in the same industry or line of work for ideas. Most sites display the contact details of the developer. Once the entrepreneur has found a site he likes, he could try to make contact with the developer. It is also suggested that entrepreneurs speak to friends and colleagues for referrals and not simply take the first one that is found on a search. The entrepreneur should not focus solely on the aesthetics of the site as the functionality is equally important. If the site is going to be for the purposes of the selling products online, then it must function well. Clients should not become detracted from the purpose of the site because it is not user-friendly or because it is too busy.

Technology is forever evolving and even people in the industry can have a hard time keeping up with the latest changes. Entrepreneurs are not expected to know or understand these changes, however it does help to know a few basic fundamentals.

Entrepreneurs should have a firm grasp of what a web presence is and the differences between a domain name and a web host.

The domain name is the address of the page. A domain needs to be registered once and renewed each year through online registrars. The server space to host the site is made possible by a web host. It is the virtual space where the site will be housed. Lastly, the index is where the information is contained in text and media files.

This information should not overwhelm the entrepreneur at all. Good developers will be helpful in explaining this to the customer. The entrepreneur must be prepared to work with the developer by giving input regarding the site and fine-tuning certain aspects to their desire. Developers need quite a lot of information to arrive at a starting point for the site.

Business website design is uncomplicated for people who know what they are doing. This does not mean that ordering a website is as simple as ordering take out pizza. Much collaboration is needed to get the site that will deliver the expected results.

By: Carolyn Clayton

Wanna Be Like The Big Boys?

My son was always trying to hang out with bigger kids. Consequently, he developed a larger vocabulary, assertive personality, and now generally gets to rule the roost with his peers. We’d all love to have this “trickle down effect” for our businesses. Forbes and other magazines constantly ask, “What if we could learn from the successes of Amazon.com, eBay and Google?” Could your business be transformed by what they’ve learned?

As titillating as that proposition is, it seems the business culture is more likely to conclude after investigation, “that’s cool, but they’re a tech company, we don’t have much in common.”

Behind the Curtain

If you get down to it, without the fancy Internet interface:

Amazon was a warehouse selling books. Not particularly extraordinary for the time.

Ebay did auctions. That business model has been around for a few thousand years.

Search existed before Google. We just used directories, libraries, and our friends’ rolodexes. Adwords was called Yellow Pages.

Your Business, Reborn

Yes, the above is an over-simplification, but the common thread you would find between all these companies is that it wasn’t so much that they were doing something completely novel, but that they were building digital interfaces of value.

There are countless articles on how to sell online and make some money. The tips I have for you are the fundamental steps of how the biggest players online went beyond that in creating their best business website designs to reach incredible profitability and growth.

Dell and Backwards Engineering

Dell is a manufacturer. But they are a manufacturer who 1st gave customers the ability to “build their ideal computer” online, and then figured out how to support it with on-demand manufacturing, which turned out to be a very different creature than the other kind.

In your business, what would customers say is their fantasy wish for interacting with your company? Chances are, you probably already fantasize about it yourself.

Wouldn’t it be cool if our customers could design their order online?

What if we had a mobile app so our customers could get what they needed from us at the moment they needed it?

Tip 1: Businesses willing to think from the outside in, and “backwards engineer” their companies to deliver that experience online, create some of the best business website designs, which offer a unique, competitive advantage with efficiencies their competitors can’t keep up with.

All That Programming Costs a Fortune

The problem for even $100 million companies is that purchasing that technology and implementing it successfully is a path fraught with danger, ending in almost certain failure. iTunes is littered with mobile apps that appear to be half-backed when compared to their slick counterparts, yet often they cost a small fortune to make.

Companies with bright ideas for the web hire tech companies to translate their business knowledge into technology. The chances of that working in the real world, within your budget (particularly to deliver a profitable return in any reasonable time) is next to none. Trade magazines estimate 50% of application projects are abandoned without any tangible value created.

I don’t know about you, but flipping a coin doesn’t seem like the right way to bring your company into the future.

Tip 2: Don’t implement your best business website design ideas for your company with the help of technology companies.

Conundrums Can be Fun

So the future for your industry is online, but you aren’t supposed to hire an outside company? What are you supposed to do?

The big players online have teams of in-house engineers who are constantly “tweaking” their sites, making improvements, delivering requested features and functionality, and otherwise spinning business opportunities into digital gold. They create their best business website designs in-house.

Even if you think you might want to build your own little digital Santa’s Workshop, the truth is that it is difficult to create an effective engineering team who is passionate about what they are doing.

Tip#3: Be aware that unless you are a software company, creating a software engineering team in-house may be more trouble than it’s worth.

Y Combinator to the Rescue

Enter the world of micro-startups and software as a service. There are now countless thousands of small, highly dedicated engineering teams who have created online services to address very narrow, specific business needs.

Whether it’s making and managing online forms: wufoo.com

Or surveying your customers: surveymonkey.com

Or a mobile app for your business: appbreeder.com

These companies rely on perpetually making their digital toolboxes more powerful, more flexible, and easier to integrate into other tools.

Put together, they can create a surprisingly powerful digital representation of your business, and allow you to put together the building blocks of your own digital interface.

Tip#4: Leverage the existing talent that has sprung up to meet the demand of companies seeking to create the best business website designs.

One Brick at A Time

When you first start visiting sites like TechCrunch or Mashable and discovering these little companies, it’s likely to set your brain afire with countless ideas.

The key is to start with mapping your existing interactions with your customers and employees, and looking for opportunities to use these tools to reduce workload for everyone.

You may not be able to put an entire process online. Perhaps the tool covers one important part of the interaction, but then your employees have to handle an email or call the customer to take the next step.

This is ok. Take these steps. The truth is, the most powerful innovations of eBay, Google and Amazon were discovered long after they first launched: community ratings on sellers/buyers, selling adwords in an auction, the “people who bought this item also bought” feature respectively.

Just by interacting with your clients online, you may stumble upon a similar kind of innovation for your industry. Then watch out, because you’ll be in for one wild, profitable ride.

Tip#5: Bend the existing technology to fit your business practices and encourage providers to create updates or add-ons that meet the needs of your best business website designs.

You need someone that can guide you to safety.

By: Brian E. Sowards