Website Design — What Every Small Business Owner Should Know!

Are you a small business owner or person trying to do their own website….or hire someone but don’t really understand what they are asking you and/or what is involved? Let me walk you through the basics and what you should know as you set up, update, or maintain your website.

First, some basic knowledge. Your website most likely is set up with two main components.

• The domain — this is the URL and you own it/lease it. Nobody else can have exactly the same address as you. In fact, it is really a good idea to grab more than just the one you want to use (Ex: yourdomain.com, yourdomain.net, etc…). You should grab very similar ones OR ones you don’t want people to use (Ex: yourdomainisstupid.com).
• Web hosting and design services — this is your website design and the service responsible for having it loaded on a static internet connection (i.e., not a machine at your home connected to the internet via typical Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol — DCHP — residential service).

I HIGHLY recommend you have your domain and web hosting/design services from the same provider. It will help make sure you don’t have one expire and not realize it. If you own more than one domain, you only need to have your website hosted on the preferred address. You can then have all the other similar addresses automatically forwarded to your website, so if someone types in the wrong stuff (i.e., does .net instead of .com….they still end up at the correct place)!

Now you need to ask yourself some questions so you understand what your website is supposed to do, how it will support/grow your business, what features are nice vs. must haves, etc…

• The MOST IMPORTANT question to ask is how will people be accessing your website. When a website is designed, we build it for a particular environment (desktop/computer viewing or tablet/cell phone viewing). At the same time, most website design software will automatically make a similar or nearly the same format that is supposed to be optimized for the other format. The big differences are landscape for computers and portrait for phone. The other difference is processing power. A very complex video/graphic intense website is NOT going to show well on most cell phones….especially if they have limited bandwidth cellular connectivity. While you want it to function in both environments, it should be “designed” for the environment your clients/the typical person on the street will use when accessing your website. The ensures it looks and functions exactly how you want, and the “close” approximation is the environment not used as much! Almost all website designers simply build it for a computer, even though most of us have primary usage by cell phone.
• Now the next question is purpose. Why do you have a website? What are you hoping to accomplish with your website? Is it to educate the average person on the street about your products/services, or is it for your clients to review additional information so you can hopefully add additional services/products they didn’t even think about before.
  • Now that you understand the purpose, you can start considering must have features!
    • Do you want a real-time calendar/scheduler on the website, so a client can “book” directly to your schedule?
    • Do you want a form to capture information from a client so you can respond with customized and directly applicable content during your very first conversation?
    • Does your industry have some security consideration beyond the standard IT stuff that you must consider (Ex: HIPAA for medical, VPN or secured communications for financial transactions/privacy requirements, etc….)
• What content do you already have?
  • Do you videos you need to load?
  • Are you on social media, and they need to be linked up?
  • Do you already have some branding standards that you need to follow (font, colors, specific artwork/logos, etc…) so you do not diluent your brand identity.
• Now you can start having that budget conversation. Your web designer should be able to give you a quote or at least a rough idea, depending on what you want and what they will have to create from scratch. Depending on the number, you may need to re-evaluate some of your content and wants to ensure what you need is achievable within your budget.

Give me a call/text/email if you have a website, and you have got questions or want to make changes! If you need a website, I can help you figure out what you want and how that is going to happen.