In our era of mobile internet access and e-commerce acceleration, business websites are an intrinsic part of commercial success – aren’t they? Some small-business decision-makers are yet to be sold on the necessity of a web presence.
Google research indicates that 63 percent of small businesses have no website, even as 97 percent of online consumers use online media to research products and services, regardless of whether the purchase is made online or offline.
So what’s the argument to get the stragglers on board? It comes down to this: Get found and get known, or you’ll get beat.
Get found …
People Google everything – something has to be fairly prevalent to become a verb on its own. If your company isn’t present in Google's search results, it’s not presented as an option to a massive potential audience. To get in Google results, you need a website.
Your website is your neon sign along the information superhighway (to use an admittedly dated term). But it goes way beyond “Stop here for this” – tell the world about your company, your history, your services and your expertise. Provide the most basic, most important information: your location, your hours and your contact info.
Of course, attracting customers online goes beyond having a simple signpost – your website must be search engine-optimized, with content that accurately describes what you do (and more content is generally better).
Either way, there’s a worldwide audience to access now, whether or not your business involves online sales.
… Get Known …
There’s probably already information on the web about your business – thing is, you can’t control it. Review websites like Yelp – or social media commentary via Facebook, Twitter, or other sites – tell the world whatever any internet user wants to say about you – even your competitors. If this kind of information is all there is online about your business, you’re at a severe disadvantage.
Instead, you should have a custom image and story. Build your brand. Tell your story, your way. Your website will convey legitimacy and build buyer confidence just through its existence, and you can extend that feeling by creating and linking to social networking sites or adding a blog.
Internet users make quick judgments about businesses – that decision isn’t likely to be positive if there’s no web presence to be found. Publish something that represents who you are and tells people where to find you and how to contact you.
… or Get Beat.
If someone looking for a business like yours can’t find you online, how do they find you at all? Imagine yourself unaware of your own business, trying to find it without the aid of any online resources. Would you have to drive past your storefront or hear about you from a friend to discover you? That’s unacceptable.
Most likely, your competitors are already online. Catch up with the times, or risk being rendered irrelevant by your competitors. It’s probable that online options exist in your industry and in your location. Don’t surrender customers to them. Compete.
Get found, get known, or get beat: These are the times we live in. Brick-and-mortar business won’t go extinct in a local context, but without an online presence, finding and attracting new customers can be futile.
Whether you’re building your website or outsourcing the job, it’s vital to have a good idea of what your ideal end product looks like. Careful preliminary planning yields a better end product, so it’s important to have a website plan to serve as a blueprint for the entire project.
Your blueprint should detail the underlying site architecture, forcing you to think through potential problems before they happen. Beginning with an organized structure makes the website logical and intuitive for future visitors.
Develop your plan in four easy steps:
Goals give you direction for every choice from functionality to color palette. They can limit the scope of your project and provide criteria for measuring success. Who is your ideal audience? What features will best attract that audience? What is its principal purpose? What must your update schedule look like? Where’s the content coming from?
Construct a catalog of everything you believe you'll need on the website. From that list, prioritize the elements that are most crucial to serving your site’s purpose. Chart out what will lead where, how your site’s hierarchy will work. What links should be available from all pages? Creating this initial navigation structure will make it much easier to set stages of your project and track progress. It will also help you evenly distribute content creation duties among the available resources.
3 Document the User Experience
Try to view the browsing experience from your visitors’ perspective. What frustrates you about your current setup? How can you change that to be more appealing? Explore your diagrammed project. The best websites are intuitive and communicate clearly. You can make or break your site before a single graphic is designed or page is built.
4 List the Content and Functionality You Need
What will each page of your site look like, and what can you accomplish on each? What functionality do you envision each page having? List your intentions for each page, as well as for a universal navigation panel that should appear on all pages. Always have in mind providing the best user experience.
With these steps complete, you’re ready to being contemplating website design. Who will make your vision a reality? You have many choices, from do-it-yourself templates to hiring a designer.
For more information on the crucial choices that come with your first website, check out our whitepaper, “6 Steps for Getting Your Small Business Online and In Front of Customers.”
What's worse than forgetting to renew your domain name registration? Getting your domain deleted as a result of not renewing and it having it registered by someone else. They may demand an exorbitant price to sell it back, or worse, sell it to one of your competitors, who takes all your customer traffic and email.
Many people fail to appreciate that domain name registration is for a set period of time. Most domains can be registered for 1 to 10 years. Once your registration term expires – or better yet, before it expires – you must renew it or risk losing it.
Although we send expiry notices multiple times prior to the domain expiry date, many customers leave the process of domain renewal to the last minute. This is not recommended, as other priorities can distract you from completing this simple and necessary process. Next thing you know, you've forgotten about renewing your domain altogether.
There are other factors that can also result in a losing a domain due to non-renewal. You might assume someone else in the organization will take care of the renewal. The registration contact person might have left the company, leaving the expiry notices to bounce back. Unfortunately, many people don't realize the true value of their domain name until they lose their registration.
The results of losing a valuable domain are costly, ranging from a relatively low cost of around $125 to redeem the domain at the registry (if it can be redeemed), to fees in the thousands of dollars charged by domain auction houses. Those vendors will price the domain based on a number of factors, including the amount of traffic coming into the domain, the number of years the domain was previously registered for, and the type of company that previously registered the domain. That last one opens the market to your competitors to secure the registration from you.
There is one simple and free solution to keep this nightmare from happening: Set up your domain to auto-renew. Our auto-renewal feature ensures your domain name will always be renewed before it expires as long as the billing info in your account is up to date. This feature adds another layer of protection not only to your domain, but also other services associated with your domain, such as web hosting and email, by preventing service interruptions that can cost you money.
Setting up auto-renewal is easy: simply log into your SiteControl account, select your domain(s), and enable the auto-renewal service. You have complete control over this feature and can opt out at any time.
There is perhaps nothing more important when it comes to branding your company then settling on the right domain name. Your domain is the name your online business will be known by and how people will find your business website. Therefore, domain registration is the pivotal first step in developing a foundation for your online presence. So where do you start? And how do you ensure your domain name provides a strong, visitor-friendly corporate identity?
Because your website address will be displayed on everything you print – from invoices to business cards to labeling on delivery trucks or other vehicles – the importance of an effective domain name cannot be overlooked. Prudent decision-makers will be sure to choose a name that’s easy to relay verbally and easy to spell, while making sure it’s versatile enough to serve multiple purposes.
You want a domain that’s easy for your stakeholders to remember. For example, if someone sees your website address on a delivery truck, you want them to be able to recall your address immediately – without even having to do a quick search.
Here are some tips to consider when choosing a domain name:
Doing business? Make sure your domain ends with a .com extension – customers generally assume a .com ending. According to TechCrunch, about 42.5 percent of the more than 250 million registered domain names have .com extensions, while about six percent of them have .net extensions.
The shrinking price of acquiring domain names means companies without their own domain name may be perceived as cheap. It also means that your competitors are more apt to buy multiple, coveted domain names to “take them off the market” in the event that they want to use them down the line. To remain ahead of your competition, take precautions now to safeguard your online presence by purchasing a domain name as quickly as possible. A business owner on the other side of the country – or the world – could be vying for the very same domain name when you finally figure out the one that best suits your company.
Even if your website’s launch date is well down the road, it’s in your best interest to acquire the name now. Recent research shows that 15 percent of registered .com and .net domain names don’t lead to live sites, while 21 percent of them are just one-page websites. People acquire domain names either with plans for the future, or to prevent someone else from acquiring that address.
Once you’re ready to acquire a domain for your website, contact a web hosting provider or domain name registrar and purchase it. Then it’s time to move onto the process of creating your online web presence. If you need help, then click here to read a whitepaper by Hostway on how to get your business online in six simple steps.
Have you learned any other helpful domain tips? If so, please share in the comments. Are there any other small business web hosting topics you’d like us to create blog posts on?
If you’re selling products online, having high-quality images of your inventory is one of the most important aspects of your business. Product photos can make or break a sale. Hiring a professional photographer to take your product photos can take your business to the next level.
Why great photos are so important
If you’ve been taking photographs yourself and thinking they’re “good enough,” you’re leaving money on the table. Nothing says “amateur” like a blurry, poorly-lit photograph. You want your customers to trust that you run a professional shop. If your images are shoddy, maybe your products or customer service are too. Remember that just like your storefront is your face to consumers, so is your website. You want to invest just as much time and energy making your website look professional as you would your physical store.
Having a professional photographer provide crisp, clean, enticing product images for your website gives you the aura of professionalism you need to stand out from the crowd. Put yourself in your potential customers’ shoes: If one site has great, appealing product images and the other looks like its photos were taken with a cell phone, which store are you going to patronize?
Hiring a professional photographer
Photography is a broad discipline with lots of subcategories. Someone who is great at shooting weddings isn’t necessarily good at shooting products. The two require very different skill sets. Don’t assume that a great photographer is great at all types of photography.
And, while it’s tempting to cut corners, don’t. Your cousin Jimmy who has a new camera and took great shots of your kid’s last birthday party probably isn’t your best bet. You want to hire a photographer who is experienced in catalog product photography.
You can search for a photographer using online or hard copy yellow pages, or through one of the various online sites for freelance photographers, including Photographers.com, Professional Photographers Association (PPA), Elance or Guru.
A Few Things to Remember
Go local if you can, because it’s likely your products will have to be delivered to the photographer’s studio. If there just aren’t any good options locally, there are some larger studios, like Product Photography in Las Vegas, which will accept shipped goods.
If your budget just can’t stand the cost of one of the local studios, try local colleges and universities that offer photography as a major.
Working with a photographer
Communication is the key. Make sure your photographer knows what your business is about. Not just what you sell, but what your brand is and who your target audience is.
Discuss various backgrounds and setups. For instance, if you sell clothing, you might want on-model photographs. Maybe table-top photography (generally cheaper) will suffice. Make sure you’re on the same page, and remember to respect their time.
We’re a visual society and the web is a visual medium. Professional photographs give your website the professional edge over the competition. And in today’s market, it’s important to stay ahead of the game.
About the Author
Monique Martin served as Chief Operating Officer for a successful online insurance marketing firm for five years.
WordPress is a popular open-source blogging tool and content-management system that offers thousands of free customizable templates, plugins and add-ons. The software and all of its associated peripherals are free – what’s not to like?
There are a number of web hosting companies that meet the minimum requirements for hosting WordPress; your choice should be based on finding someone you can trust. Hostway offers two compatible web hosting plans: FlexCloud Site and FlexCloud Site Pro. Sign up for either, and get your WordPress blog up and running.
Once your plan’s set up, download and install WordPress. Our EasyScript WordPress Installer makes it simple to deploy your blog or site. With just a few clicks of your mouse, you can be up and running in no time, your unique WordPress home accented with themes, templates and add-ons available through WordPress and other 3rd party sites.
Need help? We can walk you through WordPress set up. Once you’re online, your best resource is the online community dedicated to WordPress; a great deal of help is available on plugins, add-ons, layout, functionality, and more.
WordPress is web-based, managed from any browser on any computer without any special interface. Just log in and start managing your site. It’s all point-and-click – no HTML editing required, no FTP software, no complicated web-design program.
Eager to draw visitors? The code behind WordPress is designed for search engines to “read” it and easily rank your site, and further search engine optimization (SEO) is easy: Titles, images, and posts can all be optimized using keywords and tags.
WordPress is free, intuitive, and search-engine friendly, and is only becoming more popular. Is it worth all the hype? Is it really that easy? Know any best kept secret add-ons or plug-ins? Tell us about your WordPress experiences in the comments below.
As a web hosting company, we know how important your website is to you. So we put together a two-part webinar based on our eBook, 6 Steps for Getting Your Small Business Online and In Front of Customers, to help you build a better web presence.
Part I of the webinar, called Small Business, Big Audience – Building a Website that Sells, was held on May 23, 2013. At its opening, we addressed the question, “Do I even need a website?” It’s a question that many small businesses ask. The answer is “yes, you do,” and we explain why.
From there, the discussion centered on some of the basics of getting online for the first time – choosing a domain name, some do’s and don’ts, and the different kinds of websites that exist. Will your site be mostly educational and supported by ads? Or will it be an e-commerce site supported its own sales? The webinar wrapped up with some helpful hints and tips for being listed higher in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. (That topic is covered in this blog post too.)
Part II of the webinar, held on June 5, 2013, Small Business, Big Audience: Driving People to Your Site, was all about increasing traffic to your site. It began with a discussion of how to use social media to build an online community. Much like having a web site, social media isn’t an “optional” marketing tool anymore – it’s a must-do. Take a moment to consider these facts:
Your competition is there; can you afford not to be?
The webinar went on to discuss what social media can offer beyond an increased customer base. For example, it can increase brand awareness, make for stronger search engine optimization and more.
The webinar reviewed various types of social media you might want to implement. Also discussed was how and what to measure, and when to stop measuring. Most importantly, it emphasized that social media is about having a conversation with your community. Social media is about having a dialogue on a topic of interest to both you and your community. It might create a sale for you, but more essentially, it creates a network of individuals willing to recommend your organization. A dialogue means that you don’t just talk at your community; you listen too, and respond appropriately. (Unlike this series of responses!)
The webinar stressed the importance of having a unifying strategy for your social media efforts, which should focus on where your key audience members are. For example, if your target is young males aged 18-24, you probably don’t want to spend a lot of effort on Pinterest, as women make up over 97% of its users. However, if you’re in the bridal industry, that might change things.
So what’s your social media strategy? Do you have one? What social media outlets have been most effective in getting your message to your target audience? What would you tell others who are just getting started?
Are you engaged in a dialogue with your community, or are you just talking at them? Remember, a true dialogue means listening, too. This webinar can help you learn how to better listen to your community.
This is just a brief overview of what the webinars contained. Both are available for replay or download on Hostway’s webinar page. And in the spirit of listening, what did YOU think of the webinars? We encourage you to come back and post your feedback and comments so we can continue to improve the content we bring you. What can we do better? What do you want more of? Less of? What additional topics would you like to see covered in the future. Talk with us! We’re listening!
How hard can Tweeting be? Harder than you might think. You have little room to get your message across, then add a call to action, a link, some statistics, and still leave room for others to comment on your tweet. This compact message must make sense and be interesting enough for others to want to read and retweet or reply.
So what can you do to write the perfect tweet? According to this article by Gerry Moran with MarketingThink.com , one of the first things you need to do is to leave 20 characters for your audience to comment with. So now you are working with just 120 characters.
Start with your message and then add a call to action including hashtags to reach your audiences that don’t follow you.– just one or two will help extend your reach quite a bit. Use a mix of questions, headlines and statistics along with the call to action to inspire your reader. Putting the hashtags in the body of the message makes them less likely to be dropped in retweets, further expanding your reach, but only if you’ve left room in your original tweet for responses.
Limit abbreviations. It’s fine if you are tweeting to your best friend, but in a professional setting, it shows a lack of professionalism and clarity of message. If you have to resort to using things like “ur” for “your,” then you need to reword your message. Don’t use all caps – no one likes to be shouted at. If you really want to emphasize the call to action, surround it with brackets: [blog] or [call today].
Shorten any links in your tweets using a free link-shortening service like Bitly. Links shortened by Bitly have been shown to be more likely to be retweeted than unshortened links.
Finally, if someone responds to one of your tweets – respond back. According to this infographic, over half of all customer tweets to companies are completely ignored! And an ignored customer is likely a lost customer. Would you turn your back on a customer that just walked into your brick-and-mortar store? So monitor your twitter feed and respond to customers in a timely fashion.
140 characters. That’s all the room you’ve got. 120 if you leave room for replies. So go ahead, start tweeting. But remember: It’s not as easy as it sounds. By following some of the advice above and checking out Hostway’s twitter profile for examples, you can write more effective tweets and help your business grow.
So you want to start a website, but don’t know where to begin? HTML, SEO, ISPs, FTP, NAS, SAN… It’s hard to digest the alphabet soup when you have a business to run!
How about downloading our eBook, “6 Steps for Getting Your Small Business Online and In Front of Customers”? This great little guide will get you started with all the basics, providing some easy tips and ideas for getting your site in front of customers.
First, we’ll walk through some basics of naming and registering your domain, which might sound simple but really is a critical first step. After all, it’s your customers’ first interaction with you, and first impressions count.
Next, we’ll learn about writing and building your website. Can hardly spell HTML? No problem. With Hostway, there’s a myriad of services that make building your own site a breeze. There’s a drag-and-drop editor for beginners; the more technically advanced can upload their own site built in Dreamweaver or another program. Either way, the eBook offers tips on making the most of your content and maximizing your valuable online real estate and readers’ time. On the web, every second counts.
This eBook even talks about making your site Google-friendly, boosting its rank in search engines, increasing the chance that prospective customers will find you. In addition, there are sections on social media, engaging with your community and Google analytics – all critical aspects of a successful, more profitable website!
Finally, remember all those strange acronyms at the beginning of this blog? This handy eBook has a glossary of common web terms. No longer will you be baffled by webspeak or feel like you’ve just landed in a foreign country! Best of all, no matter where you are in the process, if you have your site with Hostway, help is just a click away. With lots of online articles and how-to documents, email and voice support, you can spend more time doing what you do best – running your business – and less time worrying about your website. So what are you waiting for? Download the eBook and get started today!