Website Design and the Small Businessperson
I got into a discussion today with another person who had a site designed by a friend, which has to be almost as bad as having your website designed by your son in law. I’m not going to link to it, since it’s so very out of date, but the site is GORGEOUS and the design suits the business so very well that I could have guessed instantly without even reading the lettering in the masthead who this site belongs to. I like the design so much I wish I could say I did it! And the site does come up in the search engines somewhat okay for the expected keyphrases, though it could be better yet. The only problem, and it’s a HUGE one, is that it’s done in Dreamweaver as a static html site and the friend who did the site and has ftp access is NEVER available for updating. The business in question is a local cafe with live music, and has a regular calendar of events. This is a HUGE problem, especially since the business is at “the hump”– the one where if you go over it you’re in business for 10 to 20 years or so, and if you don’t you go bust. And it’s even more critical since the last time the site was updated was a year ago, and the site was put up approximately 13 months ago. There are still unfinished pages, with “Coming Soon!” notices on them that have been there that long.
There are so many things that make a site successful. Or not. One of the biggest things that can make or break a site is FRESH CONTENT, a critical issue when the business is one where things change constantly, and regularly scheduled events are part of the business. A live music venue definitely falls into that category.
The last thing a business like this needs is to have a site they can’t update themselves. It was an exceptionally poor choice to put this business into a static html site, a mistake which a professional web designer would not have made. It would be much more effective for this business website to be on one of the content management systems, most likely WordPress or ModX, one that’s easy to use and has a good Events Calendar that can be updated from a simple admin interface in just a few minutes, without having to dig in the code or buy an expensive program with a large learning curve, or wait for a Missing In Action Amateur Friend/Son in Law/other relative Web Designer to get around to it sometime next year.
Timely information will do a LOT to help a website in Google or the other search engines. If this music venue’s calendar was up to date, then anyone who ran a search for one of the bands in question would most likely be directed to the website of the venue where the band is playing, and most likely in the first page or two of search engine returns. This could easily result in a few more people walking in the door at showtime, and a few more food and beverage sales made, so there’s a true conversion factor here, one which shouldn’t be ignored.
Do you have a small business website that was designed by the wrong person? Does your site do nothing but sit there and do nothing? Have you ever gotten an inquiry or a sale directly as a result of the existence of your website? Have you had timely updates that needed to be done to your website only to find that they had to be done by your on vacation this week web designer? Can you find your website in the search engines for any of the niche keyphrases that people might use to search for things you have or do? If, after answering these questions, you feel that your website isn’t designed to do all it should, maybe we should talk about updating your web design. Don’t you think you deserve a KICKASS web design?
Technorati Tags: Small Business Web Design, Website Content updating, Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Website
