Small Business Design Resources

Small Business Website: Should You Use Your Own Name And Photo?

When working on your small business website design, one of the main questions you will need to answer is the question of your website’s identity. Assuming you are a small business, maybe even a one-person-shop, do you disclose this on your site, or do you pretend to be a bigger business than you really are?

This is one area where there are no hard and fast rules, and where either approach can work, so each business should do what feels right to them.

The “Human” Route

Establishing yourself as a small, family-owned business, for example, can have a big advantage when it comes to giving you credibility – especially in social media (which should be an integral part of your marketing campaign). Social media participants typically expect to have conversations – the last thing they want when they access their Twitter account is to find that the people and businesses they follow are trying to sell them stuff.

Now, of course you ARE trying to sell them stuff! You’re a business after all. But the more subtle you are about it, the more you humanize your online presence, the more receptive social media participants will be to accepting you into their networks. The more forthcoming you are about “hey, I’m here to sell,” the less people will be inclined to follow – unless your product is truly one of a kind, awesome and everyone wants it (in which case you’ve made it! Congratulations).

In the above scenario, using your name and photo on your website and in your social media accounts and emphasizing the human side of your business can be a very smart move. One of my clients, for example, chose to say on their website’s “About” page and in their Twitter bio “we are a small, woman-owned business.” This humanizes them and makes it easier for people, and especially for other women, to connect with them.

Of course, you shouldn’t lie about your true identity! If you’re not a woman, then you can’t say “woman-owned” and if you’re not a family-owned business, then you shouldn’t use that line either. But whatever your identity, you can find an angle that would humanize you and make it easier for people to connect with you.

The “Corporate” Route

Another option for small businesses who are trying to establish their online identity is to go corporate – to establish themselves as large (larger than they are), highly professional businesses and to mask the fact that they are in fact small. This approach can and does work, because the risk with the first approach is that people will not take you seriously, while the second approach – if done right – can make it easier for people to trust you as a business, even if they can’t connect with you on a more personal level.

If you choose the second approach, you should avoid using your name and photo on your site and on your social media accounts – use a professionally designed logo instead – and always use the plural form, rather than singular, when talking about yourself.

Conclusion

So, which approach should you choose for your own small business? As I said above, this is completely up to you, since both approaches can work. I would say it probably depends on your space – is your business in a space where being personal and human would result in higher levels of trust, or would a glossy, corporate look and feel create more trust?

Finally, you can certainly combine both approaches, going with a glossy, professional “corporate” look and feel for your website, but humanizing your business by using a name and a real photo on your blog and on your social media accounts.

Why Doesn’t Your Business Have a Website?

I find it surprising that some small businesses still don’t have a website. Typically, small business owners who decide not to have a website say something along the lines of, “My business is very small. It’s just me and three employees. I don’t want to sell my products online. Why do I need a website?”

My answer is always the same: regardless of the size of your business, and whether you plan to sell your products online or not, you do need to have an online presence, or you risk losing potential customers. Here are the four main reasons why even the smallest mom and pop shop should have a website:

Make It Easier To Get More Info About Your Business

Even if you don’t plan to sell online, you should have a presence on the Web so that customers, potential employees and business partners can quickly and easily find out more about your business. These days, when people search for information, the first place they go to is the Internet. More and more research shows that in almost every area, the first step in the decision making process is gathering information online. Not having an online presence will make some potential customers assume that you’re not a serious business and look elsewhere.

Your Competitors Are Online

For many prospects, if they have a choice between two businesses, and one business has a strong online presence with lots of info and the other has no website, they will feel more comfortable doing business with the site that has a website. A website makes a business seem modern, up to date and more accessible. A lack of website conveys the opposite – it makes a business look outdated and less professional.

Your Customers Are Online

This is easy. If your customers and prospects are online, you should be online too, and since these days almost everyone is online, regardless of what you sell or who your customers are, you should have an online presence. The same is true for social media, by the way – you don’t need to be on Twitter if your customers are not using Twitter. But if they are, you should have a regularly updated Twitter account and a prominent link to it from your website’s homepage.

Streamline Customer Service

A website is a great way to provide support for your customers and save yourself valuable time. Your website should include as much information about your business as possible, with the goal of minimizing the volume of phone calls you receive and the time spent on answering phone calls and emails. Include your address, directions, store hours, as much information about your products and services as you can, and answers to the most frequently asked questions you receive.

It’s important to realize that it’s not enough to just have a website. You should have a professionally designed site if you want to be taken seriously. A generic, low-quality website could actually hurt your business instead of promoting it, so it’s better to have no website than to have one that makes your business look bad. Small business website design is probably more affordable than you realize.

Understanding and Improving Google PageRank

There’s no question that having your small business website on the first page of Google results is good for traffic. Google has been used for more than 70% of U.S. Internet searches so far in 2010, making it by far the Internet’s most used search engine. One reason Google is so popular is that Internet searchers trust the results it returns. Google’s method for putting together a list of great search results relies heavily on PageRank (PR), a number from 0-10 that reflects a web page’s importance. Average PageRank is 3-5; a PageRank of 6-7 is considered extremely good. Only a few elite websites have PageRanks of 8 or above, and only Google and a handful of others have PageRanks of 10. PageRank is a logarithmic calculation, meaning that each level is harder to reach than the last. For example, moving from PR 2 to PR 3 is easier than moving from PR 3 to PR 4. It also means that a PageRank of 4 is more than twice as good as a PageRank of 2.

The formula for calculating PageRank is patented and a closely guarded secret; according to Google, PageRank is determined by looking at more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. But even though you can’t know all the details of Google’s formula, there are some things you can do to increase your PageRank.

1. Inbound Links
   The most important factor in determining PageRank is the number of high-quality websites that link to your webpage. Think of it as a voting system: when one page links to another page, Google considers that a vote for the other page. The more votes a page gets, the more important that page must be and the higher its PageRank. Votes from more important pages are considered more important, meaning that a link to your site from a page with a high PageRank will increase your PageRank more than a link from a page with low PageRank. Links from sites that have content related to your website’s content are also more valuable than links from unrelated websites.
2. Internal Linking and Structure
   How you structure your website is important to maximizing PageRank. Here are a few tips:
   • Make sure your website has a clear hierarchy and important links are made up of text rather than images.
   • Don’t let the structure of your website get too “deep”; having to follow several links in order to get to a page from your site’s homepage generally decreases that page’s PageRank.
   • Make sure every page is linked to by at least one text link, and avoid dangling links (links to pages that don’t contain any links themselves).
   • Include a site map that links to your website’s important pages.
   • Don’t put too many links on any one page.
3. Quality Content
   Having a lot of interlinked pages is good for PageRank, but only if the content on each page is original and useful. Good website content will encourage other websites to link to your pages (see Tip #1), and Google penalizes websites for containing content that is duplicated elsewhere on the Internet.
4. Use SEO Techniques
   Don’t forget to optimize for your target keywords, so Google knows what your website is about. Good Search Engine Optimization is key to improving your search engine ranking and is a factor that Google takes into consideration when calculating PageRank.

Following these tips should improve your Google PageRank, but be prepared to wait a few weeks before you see results–with the millions of websites on the Internet, it will take time for Google to reevaluate your website.

Quick Tip: Update Your Website Often

Updating your website often keeps your website fresh in search engines. When I say update I’m not talking about a constant redesign, I’m referring to content. Search engines love text, so the more often your website has fresh content for them to scan, the more “points” your website gets for being an up-to-date source for visitors. The best way to add content to your website is by publishing articles on your blog of course. Learn more about What is Blogging.

What is your Business Image Worth?

I participate in few forums here and there and provide website critiques on numerous of them. There was one website critique request that came from a website designer that wanted some feedback on a recently completed flower shop website. I was very disappointed and a bit angry with the web designer, because the designer took advantage of a small business owner by promising to deliver a site that sells flowers, but the look and functionality of this flower site didn’t even come close. I of course dug a little deeper and found background information on the web designer, which led me to writing an article What to look for in a Web Designer.

What was wrong with that website?

Well, there was nothing about the website that said, “We sell flowers”. I don’t mean literally, but when a visitors arrives to your website, they should almost immediately know what the website is about. On top of that, this website was built all in Flash, meaning there’s no way for search engines to crawl the pages of this website. Not having the website search engine friendly is a huge loss for this small business.

Is cutting corners worth losing your business image?

The design of that flower shop website wasn’t professional, it looked like a job of a student who’s still practicing design skills. Shouldn’t the beautiful flower arrangements that this shop sells be represented in the same professional quality website? Your website reflects your business image, many will see your website without ever meeting you. Many who visit a poor quality website will reflect that what you sell will be poor quality also. Do you want to make a sale or do you want to lose that visitor for good. It’s really important to have a quality website that delivers what your customers are expecting to see. Unless you’ve done business with that person before, you wont win a visitor over with a poor website where it’s hard to navigate and find what they’re looking for.

Before hiring a Web Designer

It’s to your business’s best interest for you to do a little “homework” on what’s involved in a website design. You don’t have to become an expert, but you should understand the basics. Don’t be afraid to ask questions! Any Web Designer that you choose should be able to answer your website design questions or at least find the answer and educate you on your options before proceeding with the design. In the case of the flower shop, the use of all Flash was a poor choice; this is where the Web Designer should have educated the owner not to go this route.