Small Town Websites: What You NEED to Know!

OK. I have spent the first two entries to this blog making it pain-stakingly clear that your presence online is necessary for the success of your business, not to mention is most likely being requested by your past, present and future customers.



So now what do you do?



Well, the most obvious start is to consider your website. We'll start with those of you who don't currently have one. There are a lot of mistakes and pitfalls that business owners fall into when trying to get started on their website. I have a few very sound suggestions for you to consider when starting this process that should prove to be helpful and hopefully save you time and money.



The WHO Factor:

The first step to consider is WHO. Who is going to do your website? Now I know a lot of you probably are tempted to say something like, "My teenager knows all about building websites." While that can be a very cheap way to get the job done, it may not be the best option when you look at all of the things that need to be covered when building a website. In fact, there are even some website designers who may not have all of the information you need to get the ball rolling on your online marketing plan.



Here's a list of things to consider when choosing a website designer:

• Website content is very crucial not only to getting an effective message across to your customers, but also plays a very important roll in SEO (search engine optimization). I will go into more detail about SEO in a separate blog later down the road. If your designer doesn't know about keyword saturation within the content of your home page (and now all of your pages really) you may either want to move on or educate yourself on what you need so you can be very specific about the content. It's not surprising that designers don't know as much as they could about SEO. They are designers. They are there to write the code. If you can't find a designer to work with that knows about marketing websites as well as building them, then it will be up to you to know what you need to do. The only other option is hiring someone to do it. This can be VERY expensive and in my opinion is not necessary to get the basic SEO high points down. It's very simple, I promise. Anyone can figure it out, it just comes back to a little bit of time. Like I said, I will cover the most important steps in another blog. But for now, just keep this in mind when trying to choose a designer. Ask the questions. Make sure you are clear on what they will be doing for you and what they don't handle.


• Another thing related to designing a website and marketing a website is submission to the search engines. Believe it or not, search engines don't just know your website is there the minute you put it up. You actually have to tell them to come look at you. You do this by submitting your website to the search engines directly. However, once again, this may or may not be something your designer will handle for you. Please make sure that you ask your designer if they will be doing the submitting to the search engines for you and if they are, how often and which search engines. Once you submit your website, the search engine will send out what they call a "spider" or a "crawler" to index all of the pages of your website. When they do, those spiders will look at your keywords, meta tags, and content for each page on your site. Good SEO is very important to the spiders so that they can clearly identify who you are and what you do so they know where to rank you in a search. Good SEO has to be on every page. The search engines aren't just referring people to your home page anymore. This entire process of being "crawled" by a spider and being indexed by the search engines can take several weeks. So expect that and be patient.


• Many website designers want to sell you on a lot of "bells and whistles." Don't get sucked into this. Everyone of these flashy banners and fancy do-dads will tack on extra $$ in the overall cost of the website. You don't NEED them. An attractive site, that is EASY to navigate, and sends a good message to your potential customer on WHY they should do business with you is usually all you need. Especially to start. Designers will want to sell you the flashier stuff to raise the cost (obviously, I am in sales, I get the point) but when you are first getting your feet wet you want to focus on the point of your page, not just the appearance. So resist tons of flash and video up front. Video can be extremely useful but not necessary in the beginning. Get a good site up, let it be recognized by the engines and ranked favorably and then you can add more rich media (bells and whistles) later on.


• Also keep in mind; .jpegs, .swf, .gif and .pdf file's content cannot be recognized by the spiders who crawl your site. Don't let a designer place all of the important information about who you are and what you do into a flash or .jpeg file then paste it onto your website. The spiders will be completely clueless when they look at your site at who you are and what you do and your ranking in the search engines will be lost.


• Do find a designer that offers you content management software. This is software that allows you to update and change the things that are on your website yourself. Things like, calendars of events, specials or sales, pricing, or even photos can be altered by using this very easy content management software. It can be as easy as filling in the blocks that allow you to insert type or images into certain parts of your web page. You will want this capability because you have to be updating your content fairly regularly. Not daily, necessarily but at least monthly. Nothing will turn a customer away from doing business with you faster than information on your website that is out-of-date. It doesn't have to take you all day to do it but if you update it at least monthly, then you can spend at least a half a day working on it.

• Check with your designer and ask them about the hosting package. Hosting is basically the server (or big computer) on which your website coding and files will be stored for access by online visitors. It usually includes your email and may or may not include your URL (the address of your website, like http://www.smalltowndigital.blogspot.com/) Are they providing you hosting? Are you getting it from somewhere else? Who ever is handling your hosting, you need to make sure you are set up with some form of Analytics. This is a very important feature to have on your website. You will be using this a lot in the future to help you gauge the response of the visitors who come to your website. I will go into Analytics more in detail in a later blog but for now make sure you ask about it. If no one knows what your talking about or if the hosting company or your designer isn't including this for you, then have your designer set up a Google Analytics account. It's free. It's important. And all you need to do to get it is have your designer copy and paste a small chunk of code onto EVERY page of your website. If you are having the designer do it for you, then make sure you tell them up front that you need and want this so they can include that code as they design the pages.

The WHAT Factor:

Many people don't really have a clear picture on what their website should say. I read an article that put it as simply as I can think to put it myself; answer the question, Why? You need to clearly explain to someone why they need to do business with you and not the next person down the line. Do it in such a way that would be the same as if you were explaining it to someone standing right in front of you. Don't turn your website into an online brochure for your company. If you make it look too good to be true people really will think it is too good to be true. Try to make your content sound trust worthy. Use facts about your products or services. Answer questions you've heard your customers ask a hundred times. Give a visitor to your website all the information they need to cause them to pick up the phone and call you for more information or fill out an online inquiry form or email you or whatever it is you'd like to see them do. Just follow the K.I.S.S. rule and keep it simple. Get started with the important information then watch your Analytics reports. You will be able to tell if what you have up is working for you or not. If it's not, then tweak it. Nothing is set in stone. The only mistake you can really make is not getting started!

If you already have a website up and running (and I realize this is cheating but...) read over what I've already written. This applies to you as well as anyone who hasn't already gotten started. You can change anything you need to, you can add your analytics even after the fact, you can change your content to answer the "why" question. The only pitfall there is to already having your website up and running, is if you don't have the content management software in place. If that's the case then you may need to look to start over. I hate to say that but it's true. You don't want to have to pay a designer every time you want something changed and the designer doesn't want you to call them every time you want something changed, so please consider taking what you already have and finding a company to work with that can include this for you. Changing the copy on your website is extremely important. You truly can't put a website up and then never touch it again. You will have invested your time and money into something that will never show you any return. It's not worth it.

Once you have your designer in place and you have completely thought through what it is you need to let your customers know about you and why they need to do business with you then you should be ready to start the process. Just remember these last few tips:

• When it comes to overall design, trust your designer. They most likely have excellent ideas on color and style.
• Take suggestions and make suggestions.
• Work with your designer to create what you want.
• Keep it simple and easy to navigate.
• Make sure all of your pages link to each other.
• Have an "About Me" page and a "Contact" page.
• FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) pages are always helpful.

Ok, Ok.... I'll stop. Truly the tips and tricks are endless for designing your website. Don't just take my word for it. Search online for more tips. Look at the links listed on my blog. Site Pro News is an excellent resource for helping you figure out content.

I know there can be a lot to read out there. A whole world of resources for you to consider. Yes, it's going to take time. I already admitted that to you in the beginning. It will pay off. Invest the time. Read, research and study. The best decisions to make are informed ones.