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Web Design Prerequisites
Before you start, understanding the prerequisites for creating a business website will save you a lot of time and money.
Domain Name
It is the address that people type in the browser bar to go visit your website. You can use your business name (or part of it), your main service, your business' location or a combination of the above.
If you do not have a domain name, yet, we will help you choose a meaningful one.
Hosting
It is where your website files (pages, images and text) live. Same as houses, not all hosting services are the same. On a shared hosting account you might be sharing the same server with thousands of other websites (doing who knows what). The resources that your hosting provider allocates to your website are also very important. As a small business, sub-par hosting might impact you in two major ways:
- website security - your website might get hacked if it shares the hosting with another hacked website
- website performance - when is the last time you waited 30 seconds for a website to load. The answer is never, right?
Email Service
You can technically use a free gmail address to communicate with your clients. However, an email such as inquire@yourdomain.com is a lot more professional, less like to end up in the Spam folder and a lot more secure. Also, a professional email address usually comes with a lot of other cool features that will prove very useful down the road.
As part of our web design package, we will set up GSuite for you, at no additional cost.
A Web Design Platform or CMS
There are a lot of small business web design platforms and builders. As a rule of thumb, the more automated a platform is, the more trade-offs it has. Plus, keep in mind that a website builder is just a tool and someone still has to use it properly to get the desired results a.k.a. good website design.
Some of the most popular website builder platforms are:
- Weebly
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Bigcommerce
- Shopify
- Sitebuilder
- WordPress
Our go-to website builder for small business websites is WordPress. The are several reasons why we choose it again and again:
- more than 34% of the websites run on WordPress
- it is free and open source
- it is actively and continuously developed by a huge community
- whatever feature you are looking for can be made available with WordPress, usually at a fraction of the price it would cost you to code it into another platform (assuming it is even possible)
- you can can add a blog and easily add content without coding everything from scratch
- there are a lot of premium templates and plugins that will enable you to design your website just as you like it
The Purpose Of A Small Business Website
To make money, right?
Well, you know, if wishes were horses...
Google and social media companies have enabled people to be more picky than ever. Your small business website is not a 'first contact' sale tool anymore. This is what it has to accomplish:
- to convince people that your business is a legitimate one. Just having a website will help your business look more professional
- to showcase your products and services
- to provide visitors with ways to contact you (online and offline)
- to differentiate you from your competitors. You know for a fact that your business is better and a good website needs to help you drive that point home
- to show what your past clients think about your business through the use of testimonials
- to display your competitive advantages, such as qualifications, licenses and media mentions
- to keep your visitors informed with the help of a blog. A lot of people like to learn all they can about dealing with their issue or need before deciding to hire your company
But wait, there is more. Based on your business size, industry and long term goals, there is a lot more that a website can do for you:
- to give people uniques offers and build your email list
- to track how many visitors you had and where they are coming from
- to track phone calls
- to help you accomplish your paid advertising goals
Still here?
It is easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of features that a small business website can offer. Features that you were completely unaware of, probably.
Will my business website look pretty?
The short answer is yes, definitely.
The long answer is that, for your business goals, it matters a lot more what your website does and what it says than how it looks.
For example, sliders and (some) animations have been scientifically tested and proven to lower conversion rates. In plain English, the use of sliders and excessive animations distract the visitor from their original purpose, often time resulting in less leads (read less money).
Example:
You search for plane tickets from Chicago to Las Vegas. Before even searching, you expect to find some airlines and aggregators (such as Expedia), not a slider showing you different commercial plane models. Moreover, you expect the pages displayed to provide you with quotes for flights from Chicago to Las Vegas and not general pages such as about pages for travel companies.
The same principle goes for local businesses. The closer your website, its pages and the way how they are structured mirror the visitors' searches and the reason why they made that search, the more successful your business website is going to be. Elements of a professional looking business website
If you are looking for ways how to make your website look and function better, this is what you can do:
- choose a color palette. A good starting point is your logo, if you have one
- choose a readable font. Readability is very important because no one wants to work hard at figuring out what you do because you chose a flowery, barely readable font
- keep your message clear. Give more visual weight to your most important messages, such a call to actions, benefits of hiring you and social proof
- make sure your website looks good (it is responsive) on any screen size, on any device
- compress your images and size them appropriately for the devices they are being displayed on
- structure your content with the help of headlines
Small Business Website Cost
So, yeah, all fine and dandy, but can I afford you? What is the average cost of a small business website?
The cheeky answer is 'at least half of what is going to cost you if you hire a bad web designer'. At least half, because you also have to count the cost of losing leads, not only the money you'll spend to redesign your website.
How To Chose A Web Design Company
They're all the same, right?
Wrong.
As with everything else, when creating a website for your business, you usually get what you pay for. When you pay very little money, you get very little work. You will probably get the same text, the same images and the same poor quality website as tens if not hundreds other businesses.
That being said, a good web design company will be able to deliver a better, more elaborate website within the same budget as their competitors, just because they have streamlined their work flow.
To find the best web design company for your small business website, you should consider the following:
- how transparent are they with their work
- how responsive they are to your questions and requests
- do they provide content for your business website as well (text & pictures)
- will they optimize the loading speed of the website
- will they add analytics to your website
- will they index your new website with the major search engines
- are they providing basic SEO at no extra charge
- will they help you set up Google My Business
Small Business Website Themes
A premium WordPress theme is a collection of templates and stylesheets that usually comes with extended support from the developer. A premium WordPress theme is good news for you because your website won't have to be coded from scratch, saving you thousands of dollars in development costs.
New features can be added to a theme by the use a plugins, which are basically code snippets meant to extend your business website's functionality.
So, if I am using a theme and my competitor uses the same theme, does that mean that our websites are going to be identical?
No.
Good WordPress themes are highly customizable. You can still get a 100% unique website with the following:
- unique logo
- unique content
- unique pictures
- unique layout combinations
- unique header and footers
Think of it as two buildings that have the similar foundations, but they a different number of rooms, they have different shapes, a different type of roof and they look 100% different.
So, what's the big deal about using a template?
There's no big deal, they just save you money and help you build a professional, secure website.
About Us
We are a family owned digital marketing agency.
We spend most of our time in Skokie IL, a nice and quiet village near Chicago. Most of our clients are small to medium sized local businesses located around the greater Chicago area.
