{"id":6391,"date":"2010-09-25T06:53:54","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T11:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/37d57f8fa2.nxcli.io\/blog\/?p=6391"},"modified":"2010-09-23T08:14:13","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T13:14:13","slug":"small-business-websites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/web-design\/small-business-websites\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Business Websites Are Not Business Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first started my small business over five years ago, I set up a few \u2018web design packages\u2019 to help me think about estimating and pricing projects. The smallest one was \u2018The Business Card Site.\u2019 It was a one or two-page website that would basically have a logo, a bio on the client, and a list of services.<\/p>\n

No one ever hired me to create a small business card site, but I\u2019ve had a number of clients in the past few years who had me create larger websites that they subsequently treated like a business card \u2013 look at it, put it away; out of site out of mind.<\/p>\n

Is it true that if a client spends more, they\u2019ll pay more attention to their site after it launches? That seems to have some<\/em> correlation\u2026 I can say for sure that my clients who invest more money and\/or \"small<\/a>effort into getting their website (or redesign) off the ground tend to feel like they have more of a stake in it.<\/p>\n

But what about those clients who get a small business website designed and built, have it launched, then never touch it again? Sometimes they feel guilty. They know they should be doing something<\/em> with their site, they\u2019re just not sure what. Or they don\u2019t have time or resources to figure it out right now. It\u2019ll still be there in a few months.<\/p>\n

But as often as not clients who abandon their websites think they\u2019ve been fooled. They think that sneaky web designer pulled one over on them, convincing them that \u2018if we build it, they will come.\u2019 And it never panned out. The throngs didn\u2019t materialize and the sales didn\u2019t skyrocket.<\/p>\n

Occasionally a client like this will come to me, angry at his or her former designer for not making their site successful. \u2018We never got ranked well in Google,\u2019 they\u2019ll say. \u2018Our designer obviously didn\u2019t know what he was doing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Maybe. But just as likely, their site probably failed from neglect.<\/p>\n

A new site might make a mark on Google \u2013 show up well against some competitors if the site was optimized correctly. But when a site never changes, Google\u2019s bots lose interest. Why should they come back when nothing new is happening? They\u2019ll check out a site less frequently, and eventually may stop visiting it altogether. A good search engine ranking will begin to slip and fall. The site will eventually seem to disappear.<\/p>\n

I feel really good when a client of mine becomes a fan of their own small business website. For them, it\u2019s not \u2018whew, it\u2019s done, now we can get back to business.\u2019 Instead, it\u2019s \u2018how cool. What can we do to make this thing even better?\u2019<\/p>\n

A site that\u2019s used, changed, freshened up on occasion keeps Google interested \u2013 and as a bonus, it keeps people interested too. There are so many ways that a website can help a business engage its customers today \u2013 and modern content management systems provide all kinds of truly easy ways to add interest and value. Relegating a website to the status of \u2018business card\u2019 is not something business owners can afford to do anymore.<\/p>\n

– Debbie<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
About Debbie Campbell
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When I first started my small business over five years ago, I set up a few \u2018web design packages\u2019 to help me think about estimating and pricing projects. The smallest one was \u2018The Business Card Site.\u2019 It was a one or two-page website that would basically have a logo, a bio on the client, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[323],"tags":[408],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marketingforsuccess.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}