That Smith » Business

What to put on a small business website

Chad — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:33:46 +0000

Last time I wrote about finding a professional domain name for your small business, but failed to mention what you should put on it once you have one.

To most people – myself included – coming up with the domain name and running the business is the easy part – it’s figuring out what to put on the site that is complicated.

A small business website does not have to be an extensive project, nor does it require a lot of time to set up. Here are three things that should be on any business website before it goes live. Other pages are not essential or are only needed for certain types of businesses.

Three things every small business website needs

What your business does.

If the first page on your website does not tell me (or potential customers) what your business does then you have failed to capture me as a customer.

This is because the majority of the people that find their way to your site, whether they find it by searching or type the address from an advertisement or business card, only visit one page before making the decision to go further.

This percentage of people who visit only one page before leaving is called the bounce rate. Many small businesses I have worked with had high bounce rates because people searched for something they did not find on the page they were brought to, or left because they didn’t understand what they were looking at.

If the fist page your visitors come to does not tell them what you do, they will leave – whether they are valid prospects or not. This is why it is important for your business’s website to specify what your business does as soon as possible.

Where you are located.

Once you tell visitors what you do, be sure to tell them where you are located. This is just as important but is often overlooked because a lot of websites are created with a specific market in mind.

If you do not specify where you operate you will probably miss out on local and non-local opportunities.

Failing to put your location on your website can be compared to company vehicles you see with a phone number on the side of the vehicle (i.e. plumbers) but no area code. Be sure to tell them what you do, and where you do it.

How to contact you.

The final thing you need to make sure your website has is your business’s contact information. It doesn’t make sense mentioning what your business does and where you are located, and not how to contact you, yet people continue to do this because they assume their visitors already know how to reach them or they do not feel comfortable listing that information on the internet.

If done right, most visitors your website receives will be from new visitors rather than existing customers. Many of the businesses I have worked with use their websites as a form of advertising, so there is little reason for existing customers to visit unless they offered a special incentive for doing so.

Make it easy for potential customers to contact you, and make sure to give them choices so they can do it on their own terms. Do not limit them to e-mail, telephone, or a contact form only. Also list more than just your business address as a means of contact.

Your customers will appreciate it and you will find more people are contacting you that learn about your small business through its website.

Of course there are other items you may want to consider putting on your website, such as hours of operation, your mission statement, your qualifications, why they should choose you over the competition, services offered, testimonials, rates, and so on, but they are not essential for a site to be ready to go.

Next time I will share more of what to put on a small business website, and things you should never put on a small business website, as well as actual examples of each.

Search Engine Marketing is Easy

Chad — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:33:10 +0000

I haven’t been able to mention anything about the baby recently because we’ve been so busy. When I’m not at home I have been busy at work too.

Kaden is home now and is doing fine. We had to stay a night at the hospital last Monday so we could bring him home. He had his first doctor’s appointment Friday and weighs more. He has also been eating enough for a full term baby.

I posted a few new things on BEER dad, my Wichita homebrew and parenting site. That’s where you can usually find about what we are up to with him and our homemade beer. Here are a few pictures we have over there:

Recently at work another thing I took over in the marketing department was the marketing for our website. I can’t go in to many details about what we have been doing, but can say that over the last month we eliminated our entire Pay Per Click budget and canceled multiple online directory listings because the search engine marketing I have been doing.

My company used to use these services because we did not rank in any major search engine for our products. Now, not only do we rank in the top 3 for almost all our lines, we out rank our competitors, have increased the number of visitors and new visitors to our site by over 20%, have seen a 16% increase in orders directly on website, and saw 100 – 600% increases the number of visitors searching for our products.

I’m pretty excited because I’m assuming this means I will be qualified for a raise (since it wasn’t part of my job duties to begin with and they used to pay someone that was supposed to do these things). If not then I can always go to a competitor or other business and do the same thing.

On the side I have been applying the same tactics on my parent’s websites and a few projects I’ve been working on. If you know where my parents live, try searching for daycare or karaoke, or try Wichita open mic to see what I mean.

Other things I’ve been slowly working on is a global beer distribution company, starting my own Wichita coffee roastery, a social network for karaoke singers complete with song list widgets for DJ’s, and a Wichita small business blog that I hope to turn into a book / night courses for small business owners.

Aside from that, Laura and I are just having a good time living and being parents.

Have a professional domain name

Chad — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:46:48 +0000

One of the simplest things you can do to give your business a professional image is to get a professional domain name, and when I say professional I mean something appropriate, related to your company name, and preferably a .com, .net or .org.

Even though they are cheap and appear fancy, I highly recommend not using .us, .biz, and .info domains because they are hard to remember and typically used by spammers. I also suggest finding something easy to remember that does not include hyphens (-), numbers, or abbreviations that customers may easily forget. Also, try something short enough for customers to type.

Unless there is a good reason to do otherwise, a rule of thumb I follow is that the name must be less than 12 characters (not including the .com, .net, or .org) and I only register the .com if it’s available, then .net if it isn’t or the .org as a last option. Or, if there are equally acceptable choices, I would prefer choose the second one I like best that has a .com.

Under no circumstance however will I register more than one suffix of a domain (such as a .com and .net) unless I plan to use them for separate pages. Doing so is a waste of money – even if it is a tax write-off – and could hurt your search engine listings if they point to the same page.

Between my wife and I, we currently have about 20 domains with names shorter than 12 letters, each of which are used for different companies or sites. At the present time they also rank among the top 10 in search engines even though their page ranks are low from the age of the sites.

A professional domain name is important even if it is only used to have e-mail. If you do make a website, all you need in the beginning is your contact information because this is enough for sites to allow you to list your business in their local listings.

Once you have a professional domain name your options from there are endless. I will share benefits of and how to list your company in local search engines (it’s free!) later and what your site needs when it goes live.

If you haven’t heard or missed us over the last few weeks, you can read about why we were away on my personal blog. It has to do with baby showers and an unexpected arrival.

Use a P.O. Box

Chad — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:54:35 +0000

If you are doing business from home maybe you should consider getting a P.O. Box.

While many residential addresses can not be distinguished from commercial ones, there is extra security in having a P.O. Box – especially if your business is one that does not require a lot of face-to-face interaction. It also gives your business added professionalism.

If you are doing business from a dorm room or an apartment, a P.O. Box is a must have. Sure, your business can be successful if working from an apartment or dorm, but most likely you will not be taken seriously by onlookers.

Most P.O. Boxes begin at $42 USD for 6-months, but the added professionalism and security your business receives is well worth the expense.

Use a separate phone number

Chad — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:55:23 +0000

If you are doing business from home or use your cell phone for both business and personal calls, consider getting at least a separate number to use for business purposes.

You may be doing business from home, but you want to give callers the impression you are hard at work somewhere in an office. Nothing gives potential clients a negative impression faster than a child answering the phone or someone interrupting a call midway.

If you don’t want to pay for an additional line, then have your calls forwarded to an answering service who will tell clients you are in a meeting or on another line (but remember to return calls promptly!) or do what I do and use a forwarding service to transfer calls to an existing line.

I use this option because it costs nothing and allows me to screen or take calls from any phone I am near. If I am not available or of someone else answers I do not have to accept the call, and I never have to give out more than one number if I change phones, move, or relocate my office.

The service I use is called GrandCentral which is provided by Google. The service logs every call incase you miss one and gives you voice mail you can check any time by phone or online.

Currently you have to be invited to sign up for GrandCentral, but if you have an account at Blogger (or get one) then you can sign up right now.

Get a custom e-mail address

Chad — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 02:18:54 +0000

One of the easiest ways you can boost your small business’s image is to get a custom e-mail address for your business.

Many people take the first step and register a domain for their small business, for example janesdaycare.com for Jane’s Daycare, however they continue to use their home e-mail address or a free service for their business’s e-mail, such as progreeting@hotmail.com.

You can actually pay nothing and can still get your own e-mail address such as info@thatsmith.com or chad@thatsmith.com.

Most web hosts and registrars charge extra for this, but you can get it for free by signing up for a service such as Google Apps (formerly Google Apps for Your Domain), Yahoo Small Business, or Microsoft Office Live Small Business. Each of these services walk you through how to set up your e-mail with them, and they provide way more storage than you would get through GoDaddy or your home internet provider.

I recommend Google Apps because you can sign up multiple users and are not limited to only using webmail. I would be glad to help anyone set up their business’s e-mail, and will have more cheap ways to boost your business’s image next weekend.

Why Small Businesses Fail

Chad — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:06:08 +0000

According to a report recently given to the President by the Small Business Administration,

In any given year, about 7 percent of the working age population in the United States is actively engaged in efforts to start a business.

This 7% equates to approximately 10.2 million Americans that have the desire to start a new business. These individuals, if successful will join the 10.1 million Americans already self employed. [1]

Statistics provided by the SBA show that of these new businesses, only 66% are likely to survive their first two years. Only 44% will survive four years. Reasons for small business failures may vary, but a few common reasons follow.

Essentially, the primary reasons businesses fail include: starting for the wrong reason, poor or inadequate planning, ineffective promotion, lack of capital, overspending, poor choice of location, or lack of experience.

Depending on your business, you may be able to start one with little or no investment, so fear of failure should never be an obstacle when beginning. Before you take the plunge however, make sure you are thoroughly prepared. Remember: Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Understand your business goal

Chad — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:39:08 +0000

In the same manner of knowing the ins and outs of your business idea, you should also make sure you understand your business’s goal. A business goal is similar to the business idea, but is different because it is what you want to accomplish with the business idea.

For example: I recently spoke with someone named Carla who works part-time as a travel agent.

In the simplest form, Carla’s business idea is to sell vacations and travel packages. Carla does this because she enjoys traveling and gets discounts on travel as an agent. She also sells the packages to earn extra money on the side. Her goal is discounted travel and additional income – this is why she is in business.

Knowing your goal is just as important as knowing your idea because it keeps you focused. Your goal is what you want to accomplish with your business, and without it you would have no way of evaluating your position. If you haven’t thought about it recently, take time to write down your goal and be sure to include these basic aspects:

What do you want to accomplish with your business?

Do you wish to promote goodwill?
Do you want to make a difference?
Do you want to make a particular amount of money?
Do you want to do something you enjoy?

When do you hope to achieve it?

One year?
Five years?
Ten years?
Fifty years?

What do you need to do now to begin working towards this goal?

Unless you are just starting a business, hopefully thinking about your goal isn’t anything new to you. The goal is something you should always consider however, just as your would consider your life goals when making large personal decisions.

Understand your business idea

Chad — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:45:21 +0000

Because I tend to associate with individuals who call themselves entrepreneurs or innovators, I often hear the ideas many business owners try to run with. An important tip I would like to share is that every future small business owner should know and fully understand their business idea.

You should do this before you begin working with the idea and before you share it with others. While there is nothing wrong with confiding in a relative or close friend, it doesn’t make sense to share an details of an idea when they don’t exist.

One of the worst things you can do when starting a business is beginning before you fully develop the idea or trying to share it when you don’t know it yourself. Doing so might send you in a different direction, convince you the idea is bad (or good) when it isn’t, or deflect others who may have otherwise invested time or resources.

Learning from others’ mistakes

Chad — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:21:42 +0000

One of the best things about business and human nature is that when we take the time to observe what goes on around us, we can learn from the mistakes of others.

This is what I’ve been doing the past year at my now part-time job, where I assist small business owners and entrepreneurs with their start up ideas. As I mentioned in my post from last month, over the past year I’ve been able to witness several compelling business concepts take root, while at the same time watching others plunge into obscurity.

One of which I saw do the latter was a business centered (and patented) around a unique idea. Unfortunately for the founder and his investors however, the idea and product they created was something no one really needed.

After my last post I wrote a lengthy article about his business and what they did wrong (some of you may have read it and therefore know what it was about), but since the idea is patented and, in some form, still trying to exist, I decided to remove the article.

My point with the first article, and the one about his business was that even though you may have a brilliant or unique idea, that in itself is not enough of a foundation for a successful business.

Rather than just having an idea or product that someone has never done before, you need to ensure the idea or product is marketable, desirable, and – unless you are in business for charity – profitable.

His business, and patented idea, was pushed hard simply because no one had done such a thing before. His business was to sell an existing product that was redesigned for a specific segment of people. This segment was small however and because of the group of individuals that made it up, it never would have been profitable either.

I am unsure about what exactly made his business fail, but am aware there were several legal issues facing them because in recreating the product, they infringed on other people’s artwork, and simultaneously were not able to compete on price with suppliers of the existing brand. That, and his business seemed to have three CEOs (none of whom were qualified to run a business) with no one actually artistic enough to make the product in house.

If you are curious about what his business was, I am probably safe to talk about it via e-mail, but for his sake I will not mention it on here.