Get Your Business Online To Grow Your Small Business
As a small business owner or one just starting out, a website is a necessity to promote sales and brand awareness. Deciding to start a web design or web development process might seem overwhelming. However, in today’s fast development in the digital marketing, every business owner understand that to get online is the right thing to do to have a successful business.
If you are using traditional marketing to promote your products or services, combining it with digital marketing and enabling your online presence is more than effective in acquiring new customers since almost everyone these days is using the Internet to buy or find information about everything they need. With a presence online, potential customers can either find you easily through a Google search or learn more about you after they’ve seen your traditional marketing materials.
Creating a new website for your small business is no easy task. It requires time and effort. Yet you can do it yourself if you have the technical knowledge or hire a web design and development company to do it for you. To help you get started, whether you do it yourself or hire a web design agency to do it for you, we provided these tips which are an important part of the web design process to create your small business website.
1. Determine the primary purpose of your website
The first step is to determine what your website is going to do for you. A website generally serves as an online portal of your business to provide general information about your company to potential customers or a direct platform for e-commerce to sell products and services directly online.
Regardles of your website’s primary purpose, it is important to develop a plan to guide you on the web development process.
2. Choose the best CMS platform
Based on the purpose of your website, it is important for you to choose the best content management software (CMS) platform that will fit your business needs. CMS is a web-based application and when considering a CMS platform, your choice will impact very differently on your website. With CMS, you will have full control of your content and product sales. The biggest advantage is that you can manage your entire internet marketing.
Prior to embarking on a new website, if you hire a web development company to do it for you, ask them about the CMS they will be going to use for your website. Then, request a demo. Make sure that it is easy to use and has all the features that you need for your business. There are many CMS available, but no single CMS is right for all websites. In fact, every CMS have its own set of features to offer. So, it becomes confusing as to which platform to use as there are many basic features which are common to all the CMS platforms. Below are some of the popular choices:
WordPress – a very popular open source choice for small and startup websites. It began as a blogging platform and is now hands-down the best and most popular free CMS available. It is very easy use and offers functionalities that is easy to understand and a full spectrum of tools, themes, and plugins that enhance the easy creation of amazing websites.
Joomla – an open source that has a very large, active community, with strong social networking features for exceptional support for plugins and other general questions about the platform. Offers a feature that allows for multiple levels and types of categories for content types, more flexibility than WordPress but not as versatile as Drupal.
Drupal – a better open source choice for enterprise websites or websites that require complex / advanced system. It is capable of producing more complex websites but the most technically advanced CMS of the bunch.
To help you choose the right CMS platform for your website, here are few basic features which you should consider:
- The platform should be easy to use and convenient
- It should have an easy navigation
- The platform should be flexible and offer sufficient automation
- Low-cost for the site maintenance
- The platform should be SEO-friendly
- The platform should have a streamlined authorizing access
3. Create your own content
Creating content for a website is crucial to the growth of any business. In building your first business website, you should decide, at least in basic terms, what you want it to tell to your potential customers. Even if you decided to hire someone to develop your site, you should at least start the content creation for your own site as no one knows the basic message of your company more than you do. As the business owner, your voice is an important part of creating and sustaining a brand or service. To take this a step further, you need to take on the responsibility for developing your brand in order to speak directly to your audience
Effective branding depends on content and that content is up to you.
Conclusion
These are only few basic tips for the development of your site for your small business but if you prefer, you can easily hire a Web Development company to do the works on your behalf. They probably will provide you the best results and help your small business grow through professional web design.
