Running A Small Business Website

Is your small business website working for you?

Do you run a small business? Do you have a small business website? If you do you will know how it’s performing then? You will know approximately how many hits you get? You will know how people find your website? You will know if it was worth the cost? If you don’t then why don’t you?

The biggest mistake small business owners make is to get a website designed then think it will run itself and so forget about it! If you are going to do that then don’t bother getting a website! Websites take time and effort to run. Your websites should be part of your weekly business routine. You should be looking after your website at least once a week. Thinking of new ways to promote it and drive more traffic to it.

If a website isn’t maintained, monitored or updated then the owner has no idea if the website is benefiting the business and more so the website probably isn’t benefiting the business at all!

A website is a promotional and a communication tool. You can use it to attract new customers, and to engage with existing ones. In order to do this you need devote some time and effort to promote, update, monitor and maintain your website.

Promoting your Small Business Website

Once your website is live you need to include it in all your existing promotional methods where possible, and look to new promotional methods which take advantage of your new site. It’s up to you how successful you online promotions are. Your new website is just the start, you need to make it work!

As a website owner many new methods of cheaply and effectively promoting your businesses will become available; but remember these are in addition to the existing offline methods.

It is important that you become familiar with the main website promotion methods such as SEO, PPC and email marketing), as well as including your website in your offline efforts by including your web and email address on your stationary and other promotions, vehicles, etc. Read our article on website promotion tips for more advice and take a look at our small business advertising section for some great sites and ways to advertise your website and drive traffic.

Keeping your website up to date!

Now many small businesses opt for a static site. I often tell clients that the best website to choose is a website you can update yourself. Why? Not because that is a more expensive package BUT because it is important that your site looks fresh and so you should ensure that you update the home page from time to time. Not only that but search engines LOVE frequently updated sites. If a site has not been changed for months, search engines can mark it down as old and not as important! OK getting a static site may get your online presence off the ground BUT after a year or so you should start thinking about upgrading your site to include content management (a way to update your site yourself).

The easiest way of keeping your site fresh and up to date is to include news/Blog headlines on the home page. You could also write useful articles for your potential clients (just as I am doing now!) Search engines will love these extra pages, and in very simple terms the more useful pages you have out there indexed by google the more likely one of them will be found by your potential customers.

Because you will need to update your site it is important that you know how, or employ someone who does. This is why I always advocate that you become familiar with basic web site technologies as it makes running your site much easier.

Maintain Your website

Make sure your site:

• Is online
• Contains no broken links
• No missing images
• That the site map is up to date.
• That it displays correctly in various browsers.

Monitor your website

This is perhaps the most important part, and the one than very few website owners do. How is your site performing?

• Is your traffic increasing or decreasing?
• Where is your traffic coming from?
• What keywords are your visitors using?
• How is your traffic converting to customers?
• How profitable is your site?
• And last and most importantly, HOW can you make your website work better for your business!!!

At FABI Designs we set up all our sites with access to google analytics. This gives you access to some great statistics about your website, such as, how many hits, how many unique hits, how users found you, where they are in the world, what sites are refering you etc etc.

The essence of this article is to point out how important it is for you to take interest in your website once it has been built. A website does not run itself, yes a static site may not need much involvement, but you need to take interest in how it is performing so that you can consider ways to improve it and get it noticed by potential customers.

You may also like to read:

• Do I need a small business website?
• Google has released a major ranking algorithm update
• Benefits of Search Engine Optimization for your Website
• How To Get Your Visitors Returning Back To Your Website
• How to Promote a Website

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