What Every Small Business Web Site Should Include
BY JEFFREY GOLDFARB
Walt Whitman wrote more than a century before the Internet was a gleam in anyone's eye that the "art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity." The best Web sites incorporate into their design and communication the same time-tested trait observed by Whitman all those years ago.
Although creating an easy-to-use Web site for a small business can seem daunting, with the myriad technological tools and splashy graphics available, a few simple items are all a site really needs to get up and running.
Some of these things may seem preposterously obvious, but surf around a bit and it doesn't take long to find hundreds of businesses that forget the information consumers want most.
For starters, every site should have the company's full name and a clear, short description of what the business does. Make these two things as clear and distinct as possible. Maybe even set them off in a separate color, size or font. But make sure it's absolutely perceptible to users who you are and what you do: nothing could be more important.
Contact information is also a must. Show visitors how to reach you by phone, and make the number visible on every page of your site, designers advise. Inform people where the business is located and with whom to correspond via e-mail to answer questions or for more information. Make sure to include city, state and country. Sound silly? You're liable to get international visitors who will wonder if you're in Manchester, New Hampshire, or Manchester, England.
Let Web users know what hours your business is open, and with an additional nod to worldwide users, include the time zone you're in for good measure. Tell them which holidays you observe. Remember, the object of a Web site is to add value for your existing customers and to make it easy and inviting for new ones.
None of this primary contact information should be more than a click away and, most likely, should appear somewhere on the home page. An additional perk can be a map showing directions to a store location or company headquarters, if needed.
Even if you don't provide a road map to your business, make sure to include a navigation menu for your Web site. This makes it easy for visitors to find precisely what they want on your site and lets them hop right to it instead of clicking down paths that lead them to information they don't need.
And definitely make sure that a link back to the company's home page is available from every other page on a business' Web site.
"That really is annoying for people if they have to do a lot of clicking around to get back to the main page," said Ron Zemke, the president of Minneapolis-based consulting firm Performance Research Associates Inc.
Tell people about yourself and management. Big chunks of Main Street may have been razed to make way for the Information Superhighway, but customers still like a personal experience if they can get one. Give people a short paragraph, and maybe even a photo, with a little background and history about the company and the people with whom visitors will be interacting.
Remember that uncomplicated sites load quicker, especially for customers using dial-up modem connections, and even for those using broadband. Keep it simple, and it's more likely that surfers will not get frustrated and move on.
"One of the first things we learned when we did our study on use of business Web sites is that people give you eight to 10 seconds to prove yourself," said Zemke, who co-authored "E-Service: 24 Ways to Keep Your Customers When the Competition is Just a Click Away."
The most important thing, however, for any small business Web site is to make sure it works. Try all the links and make sure to hire a host that specifically understands the needs of small business owners.
"Having a system that supports the needs of a small business usually is not any more expensive than any other hosting," said designer Hensley, who helped create BeyondFleece.com, whose founder recently won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy.
"A Web site is worthless if the system behind it isn't powerful enough to handle enough visitors or is going down all the time or e-mail is constantly disappearing," Hensley added.
Jeffrey Goldfarb is a New York-based reporter who writes about corporate finance, media, technology and design.
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