Small Business Web Design
Could you build your own website?
One of the most common things we come across are small businesses, possibly such as yourself, who want to update an existing website or develop a new one themselves. It’s not that you couldn’t figure out how to do it, because as a small business owner it’s likely you have already applied yourself to many out-of-business tasks, such as building a website, that have arisen within your business along the way. But understandably, there are only so many hours in a day and your time is best spent running your business and improving the products or services you deliver in Perth.
Living in the society we do and looking forward we have to agree that the internet is here to stay, and whilst it will continue to develop and change websites are certainly an important aspect of how small businesses can advertise themselves. With every task in running a business we should ask the question “Should I do this myself or get someone to do it for me?”
Whilst obviously our first comment would be “Leave it with us :)”… if you decide to go ahead we are happy to give you some of our tools to help you along the way. We encourage you to remember that as with anything…just because we can do something… that doesn’t mean we should.
Get a free no obligation quote on your small business web development, it can’t hurt.
Checklist – do you have what it takes?
- Do you know how to buy a domain and attach hosting to it? (Note: they can be bought together and done for you).
- Do you know how to setup email address within the hosting account. (Note: can be done for you by some providers free or at a cost).
- Do you know which website tool you will use to build your site with? (WordPress, Joomla, Weebly, another CMS).
- What is a CMS and should you use one? (CMS – content management system and yes you should. CMS makes page creation by you very easy and the bigger the site the more traffic you can attract).
- Can you resize, upload and place images or videos in your website. (Videos are so important in improving conversions once people turn up to your site).
- Do you understand how to get my website or specific pages ranked in Google? (It’s important to make sure page titles, headings, images, text and meta information is all aligned and correctly optimised to get a page to rank well in Google).
- Do you understand how to build links to your website to help the page ranking rise in Google? (Link building is crucial in achieving a top spot for any keyword).
Web design tools we recommend using
If you have the time and skills to develop your own website then here are some of our favourite tools we know you may use to get the job done.
| We Like | We Love | We Recommend | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logo | Elance | 99 Designs | jDesign |
| Website | Themeforest | Big Stock Images | WordPress |
| Rankings | Market Samurai | LinxBoss | |
| Other | Icon Sweets | Webmaster Tools | Google Analytics |
So the final question is ‘should you’?
When we create websites we ensure they are cross-browser compatible, that means no matter which browser your viewing your website from it will look exactly the same. Some browsers display things differently and this needs to be taken into account when implementing designs.
Obviously design aesthetics needs to be taken into account, our team (or any other web developer) will have people naturally versed and trained in the understanding of how colours affect emotions and can make people feel when they arrive at your website. Or what colours work well, what colours will be displayed and what colour limitations should or shouldn’t be used with your site to suite your target audience.
Assuming you master these basics and are happy with the look and feel of your site you then need to ensure your website is ranking well in the search engines using on and off page seo strategies. If you look around the internet your bound to find a huge range of recommendations and opinions of what does and doesn’t work to rank higher in Google, but Fox Web Design uses for it’s clients one of the most aggressive and effective search engine ranking strategies, known not even to those at the top of our SEO industry, we can see their approach and we know ours is better. Why aren’t we at the top of the rankings then?….because we don’t need to be!
So really if you are ready to jump in and give it a go we recommend you use some of our tools and have a crack, the worst that can happen is you spend a few hundred dollars on hosting a domain and logo development. If you get stuck feel free to contact us and see how we can help. There is a saying that you get what you pay for, and whilst there are certainly exceptions to that rule it’s one we ensure you we don’t disappoint on when you hire our services.
Get a free no obligation quote on your small business web development, it can’t hurt.
