By Candice Reeves
The life of a small business owner typically revolves around time spent running the company, powered by caffeine and smartphone notifications — or is that just me? For some owners, the word ‘website’ is a fancy term for ‘time and money I don’t have.’ Let’s unpack that a bit.
According to HubSpot 2018 Marketing Statistics, 81 per cent of shoppers conduct online research before making a purchase. In addition, Google’s 2016 data report recorded 68 per cent of consumers who conduct local searches on their smartphone go to a store within 24 hours, and nearly 50 per cent make a purchase within a day. With 40,000 Google searches happening every second, if people can’t find your business online then how will they know to buy from you?
The good news is, websites don’t have to be a scary, complicated venture of code and design. Today, there are user-friendly resources that help to simplify website building so you don’t need to be a tech genius to get your business online. The following tips aren’t a magic website recipe, but they will give you the basics as a starting point for understanding what your small business website needs.
The standard setup for a small business website consists of four to five pages:
1. Home. Give a clear description of your main product and/or service. Visitors will give your website three to five seconds to capture their interests, so tell them exactly what you offer and why they want it.
2. About. The staple pieces of content to include here are a company background, along with the mission and vision statements. As a small business, staff bios are great to add as another way for customers to connect with your brand.
3. Services/Products. Don’t just list your products and services, give some details that will highlight what makes them unique.
4. Contact. Beyond your contact information, include a contact form that visitors can quickly fill out. The faster someone can contact you, the faster they can buy from you. Always include at least your email and phone number on every website page.
Local owner of Creative Urban Timber, Jake Arsenault, used Wix ADI to create his website. “Wix’s artificial intelligence automatically generated design layouts and suggested what content to include for every page. It’s not an exact science, but it really helped to get things off the ground.”
Wix is affordable, but if ‘free’ is more your style than Google My Business is your best bet. It’s extremely easy to use and gives you a clean, professional- looking landing page that’s accessible right from search page results.
With these basic tips and so many low-cost tools available, there’s no reason for your business to be missing out on sales because customers can’t find you online. Fear the fancy term ‘website’ no longer and get your small business website up and running. Caffeine and smartphone notifications included.