Web

With few exceptions, a company website is essential for small businesses. It helps customers learn who you are and what your company is about. And it’s growing increasingly more important to the sales process. Nearly 90% of all consumers research products and services online before they buy. Customers expect to learn more about your company online. So, even if you are a small neighborhood business, you need a website.

As the cost of domains, hosting and theme packages decline, its easier than ever to start your website. However, if you want to tie your website to your overall brand identity, you will probably need to hire a designer or learn a little programming (even if you use WordPress or Joomla, it helps to understand the basics).

If you want to sell online, you’ll need an e-commerce site. For companies with only few products, PayPal and Amazon offer easy shopping cart solutions. There are some drawbacks with both. Amazon requires your products to have an ISDN (or UPC code) and doesn’t allow sales in every country worldwide. PayPal is easy to set-up and manage, but sometimes can sometimes have glitches at checkout (especially for overseas customers). They also look a little cheap to the more experienced online shopper.

For more control over your sales and design, you will need to use shopping cart software. Common shopping carts include Miva Merchant, Zen Cart and Modular Merchant, to name a few. Shopping carts can either be software that you install into your hosted account or it could come with a hosting package.Along with your cart, you will need to set up merchant services, a secure certificate (SSL), and an online payment gateway (like authorize.net).

If you are a developer, distributor or manufacturer, you can also offer your products online through affiliate networks. They can be through services like ClickBank or Commission Junction or you can offer them directly through a shopping cart program like Modular Merchant.

Your website could also be used to streamline the sales process and to create interactive online customer service.

In developing your website, you need to think about its purpose (informational or e-commerce), ease-of-use, and content. Your brand identity should be integrated into the design and copy writing. You also need to ensure you research your primary keywords and ensure they are both in the meta tags and copy.

Once your site is designed, you will need to drive customers to it. This is done by including your website address on all printed material, ads and in social media. And, you will also need to do a bit of search engine optimization. For local companies like restaurants, stores, gyms, etc., this is a pretty easy process. Google maps and your yellow page listing usually does most of the work for you.

For companies that serve customers nationwide or worldwide, its a bit more complex and time consuming (or expensive if you outsource it). It will require a mix of web advertising, public relations, social media efforts and search engine optimization (SEO).

On Small Business Marketing 101 we will provide tips on how to develop a cost-effective website and how to promote it.