Over the next couple of months, Classic City will be offering our insights about how to create the best website for small business. Small business owners face a never-ending list of decisions and challenges, so our hope is to demystify some of the more common questions and concerns that come our way. Our goal for this series is to provide both our current and future clients with a better understanding of the web’s best practices for 2022, how to compete within your vertical, and how to get the most value out of investing in your online presence.
What makes the best website for small businesses different from the best website for a different type of organization? Whether we are working a small business or with larger corporations, ministries, or non-profits, etc., our chief purpose is to identify how their website plays a role in their operations. Small business websites are often critical members of small teams, sharing duties with sales, marketing, and internal management. We will dissect some exemplary sites that are working for their companies and elaborate on what makes them so good.
SEO for Small Business Websites
As more brands than ever are making their first impressions with customers online, our consultation helps clients feel confident that their online presence connects with their audience like a firm handshake. However, we also have to make sure that they find you in the vastness of the internet. We will explore what the heck SEO is, how it’s different from SEM, and why it matters to your future online growth (especially for local businesses!). The best SEO practices for small businesses are, of course, those that position them among and ahead of their competitors. We’ll talk about how to set yourself up for success.
Small Business Website Hosting
One of the most under-utilized ways to add value to any website (for both user experience and SEO) is choosing a good host. A significant piece to the SEO puzzle is what your audience does once they’ve found you. Logically, they need to stay on your website long enough to find out why your small business is best for them. Further, they need to stay long enough to let their search engine of choice know that they found what they were looking for. Modern audiences are impatient and load times play a huge part in bounce rate (when users leave a site without taking action.) We will go in depth on choosing the best website hosting for small business and why it’s so important to design and build small business websites that load immediately and start engaging visitors.
Small Business Website Management
At Classic City, we ensure that our clients have the tools necessary to edit and maintain their web sites on their own. However, focus on building relationships with clients and frequently continue in a managerial role after our initial scope of work is done. Your website shouldn’t be a problem–it should be an asset managed by a trusted partner. Our small business clients are used to wearing several hats and often have all the necessary technical skills and talent to take over the reins–still, they still lack the time. The best small business website management is relative to your team’s resources, so we will weigh the pros and cons of retaining a management service against managing your site internally.
Small Business Website Cost
Understanding where and how much money to invest in your small business website can be the most challenging step in committing to a complete online presence for your brand. We will conclude this series as we break down the wide range of web and digital marketing services available by identifying how much you should expect to spend, what clients benefit most from each online specialization’s work, and the first steps to get started.
Stay Tuned!
Stick with us! We’ll help you serve your small business and clients with a robust web presence that considers every angle of the user experience and customer journey. Comment below with your questions, comments, and concerns. And as always, get in touch with us directly and let us know how we can help your small business achieve its online goals in 2022!
Chris LaFay