Don't confuse your customer - help and inform .
What are you trying to do?
Tell your potential customers who you are
Tell them what products and services you offer
Describe your products and services in detail
Show them your location
Tell them how to contact you
Will your site will be a static brochure site, the online equivalent of a printed brochure describing your business? This type of site doesn't change much and customers will not do much other than get information. They contact you with an email or a phone call or, if they are in the area, they might stop in.
Most web sites today are designed to be interactive in some way. The customer can:
- ask about your business
- search for products and buy them
- fill out forms
- request technical information
- sign up for a newsletter
- download a catalog
... and a lot more.
Who will design your web site? YOU! That's who.
This site is here is to help you design and build your own small business web site. This first step will help you decide if that is the best route. Do you:
- Want a basic site at least to begin with
- Have some time or make time when you need it
- Like doing things yourself
- Prefer making your own decisions and maintaining control
- Learn by doing
... then by all means design and build your own web site. You won't be asking (and paying) someone else every time you need to have something changed. If you take it one step at a time, you may eventually build a very large and impressive site that has many advanced functions.
If you know at the start that:
- your site will be quite large
- you need a shopping cart
- you need online payment
- you require dynamic pages (pages that are created on the fly depending on customer input)
... then you have to decide how comfortable you feel learning more complex topics. Even these functions are not as difficult as they once were since many more people are designing their own web sites and companies have met that demand with shopping cart systems and online payment processing that does not require a rocket scientist to set up.
You don't have to do it all
You may decide to do some of the design process, coming up with the domain name and registering it, determining what you want your web site to do, writing your own content, organizing your material and finally passing the actual web building to a more experienced individual or designer.
The more you do up front, the less it will cost. All of this has to be done anyway, the more you do, the more you will understand and control and there will be less confusion when, or if, you decide to hire out the last part of the process. There is also some very good software available with manuals that walk you through the complete process and, if you follow the steps, you end up with a well designed and optimized site. It can put your business out on the web in a very short time with great results. See the article below.
How to build a PROFITABLE small business web site
Dramatically increase web site traffic, step by step
