It is virtually impossible to be involved in business these days without having to use the Internet in some way. Whether you need to sell or promote your services or even buy stock or supplies you will probably need to engage with others online.
But does my business need to start a website?
In short only you can answer that question and I would advise you to steer clear of anyone who tells you otherwise.
To help
Shop Front
Whether you have a shop or an office or you work from home, a website is probably the first place a potential customer is going to evaluate you or your services; so clearly, making a good first impression counts.
Get it right and the website you start, can convert an enquiry or a casual browse into a sale or a telephone call. Having your own professional business website can also ‘level the playing field’ giving your customers the impression that you are as credible and professional as your competition.
Branding
There is no argument that having a strong online presence helps the branding and promotion of a business. Websites are frequently the primary method of a company’s identity with many organisations only having an online presence and even naming themselves after their domain name.
You can also set the tone of your customer future relationship by conveying your company’s personality through a website. Customers are more attracted to bright informal and positive-looking sites than dark and imposing ones.
Starting a Website yourself
As with most services you can choose to start a website yourself or have a professional do it for you. Looking online you can easily find a free service or App that will help you get a website up and running in minutes.
Such services use WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) html editors to help you amend a pre-formatted template.
As you can imagine the results of these websites can be bland, featureless and look the same as many other websites that use the same template.
But that’s not the biggest problem with using free services. WYSISWIG editors have a very big payload and leave the code of your website bloated and in a right mess. Now you may think that this is no problem because the website looks ok, but you would be wrong.
Search Engines
There are two audiences for any website, human and Search Engine Robots. The ‘bots’ try to read the code of your website and work out what your site is all about and how you are promoting it. If they can ‘understand’ your website and see that you are promoting correctly then they will reward you with a high ranking on their engine. If you code is bloated and confused or you don’t have the correct code in place called META data the ‘bots’ will ignore you or even penalise you. It’s as simple as that. Free website builders are not optimised for Search Engines.
Display problems
The Internet is viewed on many devices and by many different browsers. To ensure that websites look the same across all ‘platforms’ there is a standard called W3C. Interestingly, the only browser that does not conform to this standard is Microsoft Internet Explorer. As a consequence when you start a website you will need to design, build and test your website on many platforms to ensure your customers don’t see a garbled mess. It goes without saying that the free websites don’t adhere to W3C standards and are not cross browser compatible.
Why you should use a Web Designer
There are three reasons why you should employ a web designer to help you start a website: Originality, Compliance and SEO.
Originality
Starting with a blank canvas means you can start a website that is part of your business not just an add-on. Having your own branded website that looks professional and has the features you want and need, tells the world you mean business.
Google uses a measurement to determine how good the first impression of your website is, they call a ‘bounce rate’. What Google does is count the time someone stays on your website page before they go elsewhere. If people stay to read your website content that’s good but if they ‘bounce off’ then clearly your website is not relevant or is not interesting. Websites with bounce rates over 60% have problems.
Top Tip
You will give a better impression and therefore have a lower bounce rate with an originally designed website.
Compliance
Any web designer worth his salt will produce pages that are W3C compliant and cross-browser compliant.
Top Tip
If you cannot afford to have a designer build a website for you then you are better off promoting your services on Facebook or Twitter rather than using a free website service that gives an unprofessional impression of you.
SEO
Imagine starting a website without building in the means to promote it, that’s the same as building a shop on a desert Island without any windows: nobody will be able to find your shop and even if they could they wouldn’t be able to work out what you sell. This is what happens when you don’t think about SEO.
Top Tip
It is far better to have a bad website found than a good website lost.
A good website designer will start your website around keywords and content, so that every word, picture and website feature works towards optimising the website for search engines. They will also be able to advise you on the disadvantages of including features such as Flash, dropdown menus, frames which could be detrimental to your website.
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