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Web Design

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 

Affordable Websites: How To Set A Website Budget

Affordable Website BudgetSmall busi­nesses and startups often seek affordable web­sites — but what makes a website “affordable”? How do you set a website budget?

In fact, it mainly depends on whether it’s a per­sonal site, or a business site.

Why? Because whilst per­sonal web­sites often cost money, suc­cessful business web­sites do not. In fact, con­trary to the hype of DIY plat­forms and cut-price cowboys, a cheap business website can easily cost you more than a pro­fes­sional one.

How To Budget For A Personal Website

Personal web­sites aren’t built to make money. So traffic isn’t their pri­ority, and even if mon­etised with ads or affiliate income, that isn’t their key goal. They aren’t expected to pay for them­selves. They also often depend on “boot­strapping” — per­sonal funding from savings, friends and family.

Read the rest 

How Procrastination Kills Projects

I was going to write about how pro­cras­tin­ation kills pro­jects seven months ago. That article wasn’t going to be so personal.

Then life got in the way. As it always will, if you let it. So what happened?

Out of the blue, my partner of over 25 years got a dia­gnosis so ter­ri­fying that we had an emer­gency wedding. “Emergency” as in, we woke up that morning not knowing we’d be married by teatime.

Eternal thanks to the Newport Registry Office, the Royal Gwent Hospital, and the Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff for facil­it­ating that. Even more so for making her con­dition more man­ageable for now.

Yeah, writing a blog post pales into insig­ni­ficance in the face of that, doesn’t it?… 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