A Simple 4 Step Process for Setting Up Your Small Business Websites

Website Setup for Business Startups Within a Week

Website developed within a week, is it possible?

Yes it is possible! But only if the business owner is proactive about getting a few items organised and has done some pre-planning with a few essential parts of the process such as the following:

Has a registered business name and ABN
Has purchased a domain name businessname.com.au
Has a logo designed and created for web use
Has an written outline of business objectives and expectations for using a website within marketing mix
Has written up a information about the business as well as appropriate advertising sales copy for products and / or services
Has setup a professional hosting account with SSL for website and email server
Has developed a media kit that includes photos of business services or products
Has developed a Business plan and Marketing plan
Has a solid awareness of business niche target market Demo-graphics and Geo-graphics

The whole process of setting up your Small Business Website for the first time could be seen as daunting at first thoughts, but if you start with the end in mind and work back, the required steps and tasks will become obvious.

First start with planning by writing in the following sentence:
“The purpose and objective of my website it to ……….. ….. …..”

Which could be to:-

Generate customer leads for sales from Google Search or Paid Advertising via website.
Provide information about how to increase, save, solve a common problem, improve something which all lead the customer to information about solutions that you offer in the form of products or services.
Offer a new amazing unique quality product or service to “your specific target market” who is really needs “XYZ benefits”.

The process of clarifying the purpose provides greater insights into what needs to considered and what actions need to started, especially in regard to stating your expectations and objectives and setting the appropriate goals to achieve the desired results.

By clarifying the purpose of your proposed website, there will be a greater realisation that the expected outcome and goals can be achieved with less time and energy by pre-planning the content, style for your intended target audience.

Website Planning Tips

To start your Small Business Website content development:

The first place to start is to consider the following marketing brainstorming questions:

Write up notes about the main reasons and purpose you need to use a website for promoting your business.
List the objectives that your web site will need and aim to achieve.
List the expected results that you aim to achieve from using a small business website.
List ideas about how you intend to reach your target market and market place.
Consider what actions you will want your visitors to take when they are on your web site.
Profile your target market in terms of what are their main needs, frustrations and aspirations, age and gender.
Write up content that aims to outline potential solutions that your target market need.
Write up a list of the features and benefits of your solutions that you intent to offer.
Consider collecting a set of testimonials from past customers outlining the problems and the solutions that your product or service provides.
Have you considered social media and how you could use it to reach your target market?
Write up a list of specific keywords and topics that you believe that your target market could potentially use in search engines to find solutions that you provide.
If you are intending to sell products and services online write up the specific details for each item.
Research your intended proposed target market in terms of population, income, location, needs, wants, their challenges, their age and gender. How often does your target buy and from where? Do they buy online? What topics, keywords and info do they search for before they buy?

Why not research other websites within the same market sector (both local and nationally) as your own proposed project in order to identify aspects that you believe are relevant for consideration for your own objectives. Consider the content layout, marketing strategies, and the tone of message.

What could be some take away ideas that you could explore in your own website project? Do they us a marketing funnel or just an informative message style like brochures? Are there “call to actions” hooks and how have they been used for what incentives?

For a Small Business Website design point of view

Create a list of businesses websites within your market sector including competitor sites to consider aspects including layout style and target marketing. Documented a number of websites that you like the look of or think are relevant to your own goals and expectations. Consider the content layout for positioning your business information and call to actions to engage your visitors.

Small Business Website Project Plan

And finally, one of the biggest parts or planning your Small Business Website is to create a “Plan” to identify the main navigation menu links, how many pages within what category structure.

A site map or site plan is typically done using pencil and paper drawing out boxes and lines showing the hierarchy of top level menu and secondary level menus which are known as sub-menus. Creating a site map plan is an extremely important step for both author and web designer to see such a diagram before starting anything, even before considering getting a quote.

Such a site plan with highlight any problems for existing content or identify content that needs to be developed. It also explores layout as well as what sub-menu links are to go where on what pages within the whole website.

A web site plan can save you hours of potential work to avoid a situation of developing a project without direction similar to throwing darts at a dartboard blind folded. An example of a simple site map schematic plan can be seen at web-site-map-skeleton-example.pdf

To develop a typical website project there are some standard pages to provide such as:

Home Page: Think about an overall umbrella message to your target market focusing on trust, credibility, reputation, track record, the problems and frustrations that you offer solutions to.
Services introduction page: Provides a general abstraction insight with links into your niche services pages.
Niches services pages (Sales pages): overview, outline and detail your product or service with tone that aims to convert the prospect into a customer sale.
About Us page: Outline who you are or what your company is about while considering qualifications, history and insights about the benefits you offer such as “why choose us” message.
Terms and conditions page
Privacy Page: as required for any Australian Business who collects, stores information about their customers.
Testimonials page
Contact us location page, with phone numbers, email, physical address.
Awards or community contribution page
Gallery page: maybe examples or case projects with before and after photos
FAQ’s: Frequently Asked Questions Page
Blog Page: for an archive of posts sharing abstract insights with links into full article that informs customers about specific aspects of your products or services. This page acts an index archive page to articles used for content marketing specifically for attracting visitors from Google Searches to your information, which you can then channel into your sales pages.
Individual Posts that provides a solid, quality and useful section of contents about 700 words.

Criteria for modern websites to perform using Search Strategies

The main key point these days is accessibility for multiple devices especially for mobile phones and tablets.

Therefore here are some key points for your awareness.

The site needs to be responsive to all devices interacting with your content
The site and pages must be fast to load including graphics
The text size must be legible
The navigation tabs must be accessible on all devices

Small Business Website setup

If you need a Small Business Website setup or you need an existing site re-developed, then we can help.

STEP 1

You can get started today by arranging a free consultation to process your needs and objectives for pre-planning your website development proposal. Your website project can be started after our meeting by paying a deposit of $200 via direct credit deposit, cash or PayPal. Some projects will also require a written project proposal to be signed and approved by the business owner before your job proceeds.

Order Your Website for Business Today with a $200 deposit and I will follow up with with a list of goals to help you get started straight away.

STEP 2

Your Second Step is to buy a domain name for your Business name

From deciding on a domain name for a web site address (www.yourbusinessname.com.au) using your business name or keywords through to making decisions about site’s structure and design aspects.

We offer a one-stop point to organise the whole process and get you up and running within days of your order. From organising your domain name to your web site hosting account to developing your website as well as facilitating your email addresses.

This step involves selecting your domain name for you business branding and promotions. This step is extremely important for many reasons of credibility as well as for being found from keyword searches.

For an Australian Domain name, dot com dot au you will need to provide ABRN and ABN and the requested domain name will need to be a derivative name of you registered business name.

STEP 3

Your Next Step is to buy a web site hosting plan

Hosting for your Small Business Website needs to be reliable, secure and considered separately from your existing ISP services. As you need to have access to reliable support and assistance for all your web site hosting needs a dedicated service for business is seriously considered to be essential to your success online. These needs include reliable, secure backup and email systems.

If you intend using the WordPress be aware that the hosting needs to secure and maybe use a dedicated hosting account in order to avoid potential security problems.

STEP 4

Your Main Goal for a Small Business Website is to develop your marketing message and your information content for various pages.

Getting your website content organised, written up and proof read can be a major problem for many small businesses due time restraints or not knowing where to start.

Initially, simply start by collating your existing information that you have used to promote your business in traditional print media such as general information about your business, contact details, what products and services you provide, and terms etc in order to start mapping out a series of pages for your website.

Your website content needs to consider your main message to your target market as well as the base level aspects of who, what, and where, but also, from a marketing point of view “what is your business proposition”.

Your business proposition is is often referred to as your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) or USV (Unique Selling Value) and needs to be considered within your marketing strategy and how you aim to use your website. A typical USP may flow along the lines or standard formulas such as:

We help “the target market, demographics” do “what action” with “what benefit”

“We provide………………………… (the what) to help ……………….. (your target audience) to do or achieve ……………………………. by ………………………. (the how). Our services are provided with industry recognition and trust with commitment in / to / for ………………………………… (the why)”

“We help the niche market / people who are ………. who want to improve their skills in ………… using applied knowledge of ………. (what ever you believe your target market wants to know etc).”

Develop a professional media kit that you could use for any advertising which include, business information content, your logo, photos of staff, shop front, products or services being provided.

Our price range for website services for small business.

Start-up - entry level website from $700 ($200 Deposit required)
Intermediate website: Up to 20 page website starts from just $2400 ($1000 Deposit required)
A complete customised ecommerce website development starting at $3400

Order Your Website for Business Today with a $200 deposit and I will follow up with with a list of goals to help you get started straight away.

Innervisions web design services are focused help you to improve your Small Business Website results.

As a web designer I have taken on a responsibility to help customers by listening to their needs and wants in order to pursue positive results as needed. As part of this responsibility I have endeavored to discover for myself the methods to respect the search engine requirements to unlock and identify the necessary steps required to improve your web site visibility.

To help my customers raise awareness about these search engine requirements, I have gathered together information outlining the what, why and how web sites need to be keyword structured to be more visible online.

To find out more about how we can you your business online use our contact page form

If you are interested in letting innervisions help you in any of your web site projects for web site visibility, please let us know by contacting us via our web form or download our Free Web Planning guides and we will be in touch with you soon.

Best regards for your web site results. If you would like personalised assistance with your web site project, contact me for a consultation or to access our free planning guides.

Gavin Gilmour

Our Process to Small Business Websites