What is the best website for my small business?

As a micro or small business owner you know that having a website is essential. But what kind of site? Are there rules concerning its design? Which features does it need?
There are 5 basic steps to follow in order to define the type of site you need.

1. What is the purpose of my site?

It is important to start by defining what your website should deliver. No matter the size of your organization, the only way to make a successful website is to have a clear goal for it. So, do not consider it as an obvious step and spend time on reflecting on the primary purpose of your site. Should it promote your business, support it, provide information to clients or sell products online? It has to be clearly defined before starting any work on a site.

2. How do i communicate?

Once you have defined your purpose, you need to know how to communicate it. This can only be done by writing relevant content. Things like what products and services you offer, the pricing, contact information, past work, unique selling proposition or why you are different from others. Content is the key thing required to drive traffic to a website. Many search engines index pages according to their content so put appropriate content with relevant keywords.

3. What is my target audience?

What is really essential for all small businesses is to understand your target audience. You must know what your visitors need from your website if you want to retain them. To get them to deal with your company you have to be able to tell them what they want to know about your business and the things which matter to them. So again good content is the key. Relevant and search engine friendly content will help your website to be found and your business to get new customers.

4. What is the right design for my site?

The design should help small businesses to use web efficiently. The homepage has to be very much relevant and focus on the main purpose of the website. The best websites are very simple with a clear presentation. Content and information have to be extremely well sorted out so that it does not look very clumsy and lengthy with a lots of text and scrolling down needed. A good design will show your professionalism while expressing your personality. But it will also efficiently deliver your message to your visitors.

5. How comfortable are you with computers?

Another step to consider is how computer savvy you are. If not so much, chose to build a website relying on a very intuitive and easy to use Content Management System. So that updating your site and its content becomes fun and effortless. You can also implement the latest tools to automatize some marketing tasks like pushing your updates to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, simplifying your newsletter sending process, etc.. In short, utilize the latest technology on your website to make your life more simple!