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Small Business Marketing

How To Start A Small Business Website: The Essentials

If you have a small business, or are thinking of starting one, you need a website. There’s a lot to con­sider though — and many small busi­nesses fail because they’ve over­looked one or more of the essen­tials. So here’s how to start a small business website.

Ready? Let’s begin!

What Every Small Business Needs

First, there are a few things every business needs. Hopefully you’ve con­sidered these already, but let’s cover them briefly, just in case.

A Good Offer And A Realistic Target Market

The key words here are “good”, “real­istic” and “target”.

Startups often hope to sell some­thing they like to “everyone”. That rarely works — espe­cially if no-one else sells any­thing similar. If there’s no com­pet­ition, the market may not exist, or may not be sus­tainable.… Read the rest 

Why Small Businesses Need Professional Websites

Professional web­sites can seem like big invest­ments to small business owners. Online mar­keting is such a huge topic that it can be hard to work out where to begin.

So why do small busi­nesses need pro­fes­sionally designed web­sites? Here’s an analogy that may help.

Professional Websites Are Marketing Vehicles

Your website is your main mar­keting vehicle in the non-stop race for sales. To extend that analogy, hosting is the garage you rent for it, and your domain is the address of that garage. Site vis­itors are pas­sengers that you pick up briefly, and some of them convert into customers.

However, your vehicle won’t get far without regular main­tenance (support and updates) and good driving (active mar­keting). Leaving it in the garage achieves nothing, no matter how pretty it is or how much work you put into it.… Read the rest 

Why Cheap Web Designers Often Disappear

Cheap web designer disappearingEveryone loves cheap web design — until they learn that it takes far more than low prices and fancy graphics to build a business website that works. That can be a hard lesson about cheap web design risks, but it often gets worse. Because cheap web designers often disappear.

This can be a touchy subject though, so let’s be clear: most exper­i­enced web designers I know are tal­ented people who only want to help. That said, exper­i­enced web designers are rarely cheap web designers.

Still, I have just spoken to yet another dis­tressed small business owner. His cheap web designer had left him in the lurch with a broken website and no access to fix it.

Other business owners had told him this was “typical” of “flaky” designers.… Read the rest 

Small Business Coronavirus Lockdown Help

Wales is entering another COVID-19 lockdown (as of October 23rd). Folks found this post helpful back in March, so I’m updating it with some new offers.

As small business owners in these dif­ficult times, we need to remember:

  • Adaptability is the small business advantage.
  • Negativity under­mines cre­ativity and planning.
  • Our fam­ilies and teams need to see con­fidence, not fear.
  • Stress under­mines the immune system. Breathe, and calm.
  • Mutual support, determ­in­ation and flex­ib­ility will win.
  • No entre­preneur sur­vives without being able to see hope in adversity. Silver linings may be a razor’s edge at times, but that’s where we find the silver.

Business Reality Check

Choose opportunityMany UK firms pan­icked at the first lockdown, fretting about remote working and scaling back on expenses.… Read the rest 

Why Do Website Prices Vary So Much?

Small busi­nesses often want simple, affordable web design packages. That’s fine, we can do that — but then some call pro­fes­sional web design “expensive” and “over­com­plicated”. So why do website prices vary so much?

Because web design can mean several very dif­ferent things.

Business web­sites serve a wide range of pur­poses. Some of those pur­poses are common, others less so. So there are at least three levels of web design to consider.

Affordable Web Design Packages

Common require­ments can some­times be stand­ardised, and pro­cesses stream­lined, to keep costs down. However, flex­ib­ility creates com­plexity, so in practice, “stream­lining pro­cesses” always means “restricting choices”.

For some people, and some pur­poses, that makes little dif­ference — and cash flow is often a bigger concern for small busi­nesses.… Read the rest