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 organised and has done some pre-planning with a few essential parts of the process, such as the following tasks:

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 a written outline of business objectives and expectations for using a website within the marketing mix
Has written up information about the business as well as appropriate advertising sales copy for products or services
Has set up 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 markets with Demographics and Geographics

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

The first step for setting your objectives starts with planning by writing the following sentence:

“The purpose and objective of my website pages are to ……….. ….. …..”

Which could be to:-

Generate customer leads for sales from Google My Business, Google Search Networks (keyword, images, or video), or Paid Advertising via the website.
Provide information to customers about common problems or improve something.
Offer a new unique quality product or service to “your specific target market” who really needs “XYZ benefits”.

The process of clarifying the objectives and purpose of a website will provide greater insight into what needs to be explored. The insights also highlight what actions need to be 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, you will be able to achieve your desired outcome with less time and energy by pre-planning the content you need and the style for your intended 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 website will need and aim to achieve.
List the expected results you want and aim to achieve from using a small business website.
List ideas about how you intend to reach your target market and marketplace.
Consider what actions you will want your website visitors to take when they are on your website.
Profile your target market characteristic profile: in terms of who, what are their needs, problems, frustrations and aspirations, age, and gender.
Write up a content plan that aims to outline potential solutions your target market would be interested in.
Write up a list of the features and benefits of the solutions you intend to offer.
Consider collecting a set of testimonials from past customers outlining the problems and solutions that your product or service provided.
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 the solutions you provide.
If you intend 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 challenges, age, and gender. How often does your target buy 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 the message.

What could be some takeaway ideas to explore in your own website project? Do they use 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?

From a Small Business Website design point of view

Create a list of business websites within your market sector, including competitors and your industry sectors to consider various aspects such as the layout style and target marketing angles. Document 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 action to engage your visitors.

Small Business Website Project Plan

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

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

Such a site plan will highlight any problems with existing content or identify content that would need developing. It also explores a proposed layout in what sub-menu links are to go where on what pages within the whole website.

A website plan can save you hours of potential work to avoid developing a project without direction, similar to the thought of throwing darts at a dartboard blindfolded. 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 plan 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, and the problems and frustrations you offer solutions to.
Services introduction page: Provides a general abstraction insight with links to your niche services pages.
Niches services pages (Sales pages): overview, outline, and detail your product or service with the 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 the “why choose us” message.
Terms and conditions page
Privacy Page: as required for any Australian Business, that collects and stores information about their customers.
Testimonials page
Contact Us location page, with phone numbers, email, and physical addresses. N.A.P (Name, Address, and Phone)
Awards or community contribution page
Gallery page: maybe examples or case projects with before and after photos
FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions Page
Blog Page: for an archive of posts sharing abstract insights with links to full article that informs customers about specific aspects of your products or services. This page acts as an index archive page to articles published for content marketing for specifically attracting visitors from Google Searches to your information, which you can then channel into your sales pages.
Individual posts need to provide a solid, quality, unique, useful information content of about 700 words.

Criteria for modern websites to perform using Search Strategies

The main key point of concern for websites these days is speed, readability, and accessibility on multiple devices, especially 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 guide

If you need a Small Business Website set up or if you need an existing site re-developed, 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 we have had an initial phone call or 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 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 website address (www.yourbusinessname.com.au) using your business name or keywords to making decisions about the structure and design aspects.

We offer a one-stop point to organize the process and get you up and running within days of your order.

We can guide you from organising your domain name to your website hosting account to developing your website and facilitating your email addresses.

This step involves selecting your domain name for your business branding and promotions. This step is needed to sort out for many reasons of credibility and 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 your registered business name.

STEP 3

Your Next Step is to buy a website hosting.

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 website hosting needs, a dedicated service for business is seriously recommended and essential to your success online. These needs include reliable, secure backup and email systems.

If you intend to use WordPress be aware that the hosting needs to be 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 proofread can be a big challenge for many small businesses due to time restraints or not knowing where to start.

Initially, start by collating your thoughts and existing information that you have used to promote your business in traditional print media 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 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 or USP (Unique Selling Proposition) or USV (Unique Selling Value) needs to considered within your marketing strategy and how you aim to use your website. A typical USP may flow along the lines of 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 ………. (whatever you believe your target market wants to know etc).”

Develop a professional media kit that you could use for any advertising which includes, 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 4 Page website from $700 ($200 Deposit required)
Intermediate website: Up to 20 Page Website starts from just $3000 ($1000 Deposit required)
A complete customised ecommerce website development starting at $3400

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

If you require external services for writing your website page content, we can help you organise it.
The cost of content writing would start at about $200 per page (allowing for a minimum of 600 words per page).

Innervisions web design services aim to help you 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 the methods to respect the search engine requirements to unlock and identify the necessary steps to improve your website visibility.

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

To find out more about how we can help your business online using our contact page form

If you are interested in letting Innervisions help you for any of your website projects for website visibility, please let us know by contacting us via our contact form or downloading our Free Web Planning guides. We will be in touch with you soon.

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

Our Process to Small Business Websites