Starting a Small Business Website Right

If you are considering setting up a small business website but are not sure of how to go about it, then it is easy to make mistakes through no fault of your own by following bad advice. Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal wrote an article entitled Creating a Website for Almost Nothing but the advice in such a prestigious publication should be avoided like the plague.

The article in the Wall Street Journal is guilty of adopting the “get it done cheap” approach that journalists and other “technology writers” suggest when they don’t really know what is involved in creating a professional website that is both a) useful and b) does your business justice.

Here I have dissected the article and put forward my own thoughts which will help you follow the right path and set up your own small business website.

1. Buy a Web Address

The article suggests buying a domain from a low-cost provider such as Go Daddy, Tucows or Register.com.

Affiliate Dragon Tip: The article appears to be sponsored by, or is at the very least heavily endorsing Go Daddy because the other two mentioned either don’t allow domain name registrations (Tucows) or cost a lot more than average (Register.com). Registering a domain name for as little as possible is a no-brainer but there are numerous providers who can do it for you, so please shop around.

The type of domain name is also important. If you are targeting the global market, then you need a .com but a .co.uk will be sufficient if you are targeting just the United Kingdom and if the .com version is not available. Most people automatically type “.com” if they are not entirely sure of the full website address so with that in mind do not waste your time on the other extensions, such as .net, .info, .biz or .org.

2. Find a Home

This is where the Journal starts dishing out really bad advice. The writer suggests taking advantage of “free” web hosting providers in return for adverts appearing on your website.

Affiliate Dragon Tip: This advice is all well and good if you are a teenager wanting to blog about your Pot-Noodle existence, but not a small business who wants to make a striking impression to potential customers. The last thing you want your business website to have is banner adverts plastered all over it, or pop ups / unders annoying your visitors to the point of clicking the Back button and never returning.

Don’t cut corners with your hosting - pay for some. You can get a decent, advert-free hosting package for a few pounds per month and to be honest, if you cannot afford that, then just how feasible is your business anyway?

3. Build Your Website

The article suggests you can build your website using template tools which a lot of free hosting providers offer. The writer does, however, acknowledge using templates such as this may make a website look generic.

Affiliate Dragon Tip: One word. Wordpress. Instead of using some junk web template upload and install Wordpress to your (paid) web hosting package and enjoy the most innovative and widely supported, yet easy to use and entirely free, web publishing platform in existance.

Whether you want to create a “brochure” style website, a company blog, or a something in between, you can accomplish this perfectly with Wordpress and because it is open source, new themes and useful new plugins are being released all the time. These plugins will enable you to get even more out of your website, such as adding videos, making your web pages more search engine friendly and integration with some of the popular social media websites.

4. Get Paid

The writer discusses adding functionality to your website to enable customers to purchase items from you. Unsurprisingly, he suggests using Paypal or “special e-commerce software”.

Affiliate Dragon Tip: While Paypal is the easiest option, especially for beginners who only intend selling a few items, it isn’t the only solution. Plus, the way the writer describes “special e-commerce software” makes it sound both expensive and difficult to implement. Neither is the case.

A plugin for Wordpress, WP Commerce, allows you to add ecommerce functionality to your website and supports several payment processors while OSCommerce is an established and widely supported free ecommerce package. Both are perfect for small businesses who expect to grow over time and they will support stores with thousands of products.

5. Get Sponsors

The notion here is you can monetise your website with programmes such as Google Adsense which will display adverts on your websites and earn you money when visitors click on them.

Affiliate Dragon Tip: If you have created a small business website, then the last thing you want is for people to click on adverts and be directed away from your website. Why would you want to lose potentially thousands of pounds worth of new business for the sake of a few pence in Adsense revenue? This advice beggars belief.

Sure, some kid with a hobby page about his favourites episodes of Family Guy may benefit from a little advert sponsorship, but your company website needs to be an online sales rep, a lead generator for your business and that means customers staying on your website for as long as possible to entice them to get in touch with you.

6. Get Known

The article advises optimising your website for the search engines and following a multi-step process to choose and incorporate keywords and phrases relevant to your business, as well as using localised websites and directories.

Affiliate Dragon Tip: The advice in this section is generally good, but search engine optimisation is only half the battle. It doesn’t describe any aspects of link building, which is crucial to a website if it harbours any long-term ambitions of ranking well in the search engines.

Perhaps space was an issue but it could have also discussed the merits of promoting the website on the social media websites as well as a couple of traditional offline tactics. Business cards or promotional postcards, anyone?

Summary

If you want to set up a website for your small business then it is essential you do it properly. Register a memorable .com or .co.uk domain name and pay a few pounds for an advert-free hosting package. If your budget is limited, you can install Wordpress and find a free theme which compliments your business. You can always change the theme at a later time with little disruption.

By setting your website up properly and doing some basic search engine optimisation and link building, you will already be ahead of your local competitors. One thing I have found is small businesses targeting a localised market are not very good at setting up their web presence. Make sure you do not join them in online failure.