Own A Small Business? Here's Why You Need A Website
Here’s why your small business needs a website if you want to take control of your business’s best information on the web.
Why You Need A Website
Control the best information about your business on the web.
Here's a scary small business statistic - 42 percent of all small businesses don’t have a website. That’s better than it’s been. But the news is not all good.
In the midwest 58 percent of small businesses don’t have their own site. And 77 percent of very small businesses –with gross revenue under a million dollars – don’t have a site.
If your business doesn’t have its own site and someone tries to look you up on the web what are they going to find? They’re only going to find stuff that other people have posted about your business. And it may not be all that complimentary.
If you want to control the best information about your business on the web you have to have your own site.
When you talk with small business owners about why they don't have a website they're likely to say they can't afford it. That's just not the case.
Sure, there are agencies who won't talk to you for less than $5,000. We're not one of them.
Part of our mission is to make professional marketing services affordable for small businesses.
Our websites start at $1,000. That includes five pages of content optimized to give your site the best shot at online visibility.
When you decide you want to take control of your business's presence on the web we'd like to talk with you.
Making Web Sites Affordable & Effective for Small Businesses
Three years ago 52% of small businesses didn’t have a web site. A new survey shows that now 46% of small businesses still don’t have a web site.
Can a small business afford not to have a web site?
Three years ago 52% of small businesses didn’t have a web site. A new survey shows that now 46% of small businesses don’t have a web site.
That’s progress. But it’s still 46%. That means nearly half of small businesses aren’t going to be found by potential customers who search for products and services they need and want.
Three Reasons
Ask those 46% why they don’t have a web site and you’re likely to get at least one of these three reasons.
One – They think a web site isn’t relevant to their type of business. Actually consumers search for everything online. Just ask Google – they handle an estimated 5.5 billion searches every day.
Two – They think they can’t afford it. They really can’t afford not to have a web site.
Three – They’re using social media and they think that’s enough. The thing is you just can’t do on social media everything you need to do to explain your business to people who want to know if you can meet their needs.
“We’re committed to making web sites affordable for small business owners.”
We’re Looking For That 46% Who Don’t Have A Web Site.
Call us hopelessly optimistic, tell us we’re tilting at windmills, even suggest we’re on a mission impossible. That’s fine with us.
We’re committed to making web sites affordable for small business owners. Web sites that articulate details of their business and their mission. Web sites that proudly proclaim to the entire world the unique value – and added value – of the products and services they provide. Web sites that help prospective customers find them.
Let’s talk about the whole perception that web sites are expensive. It depends on who you ask. Like many other creative service providers web developers are all over the scale in terms of price. Some of them won’t talk with you for less than the price of a luxury dream vacation.
Our Sites Start At A Fraction Of Those Rates
It’s part of our commitment to small business owners in this region.
Looking for an affordable and effective web site for your business? Give us a call for a no-cost consultation. Or use our convenient contact form to send us an email.
But Can They Read It?
Readability is particularly important these days when most of what happens on social media like Facebook happens on mobile devices. We're looking for knowledge, yes – but convenient knowledge. If it's too difficult to read forget it.
Writing for Your Audience
You pour your heart and soul into growing a thriving business. And if you're driven enough to succeed a big part of what gets you there is the way you marshal your marketing communications. How well you articulate what you do and what you sell may very easily make the difference between going back to the office with a new client or wondering where you went wrong.
So it's more than worthwhile to be as sure as you can that what you're saying is what your prospect is actually hearing. Today that means getting it right in social media as well as in your traditional media, collateral literature and interpersonal communications. Your Facebook business page, your blog, your email newsletter, your web site all have to communicate effectively.
The question is how. One way is to use something called a reading comprehension scale. It's a tool that helps you figure out how easy it is to read what you wrote. Some business owners are surprised to find that they write at a very high level. That's a good reflection on their intellect, language skills, knowledge and experience. But if their prospects are more comfortable reading at a more moderate level the intended message may be lost in a lot of complex compound sentences that contain lots and lots of long words.
Two Main Tools
The two main readability tools used today are the Flesch Reading Ease scale and the Flesch-Kincaid index. Google them and you'll find more than you wanted to know. The gist of it is the Flesch scale ranks a writing sample on a 100-point scale. The higher it scores the easier it is to read. The Flesch-Kincaid index estimates the grade level reading proficiency needed to comprehend the text.
Our general rule of thumb is to shoot for at least 60 on the Flesch scale and no higher than 8th grade on Flesch-Kincaid. If your text requires greater reading skill it's a good bet that your reader is going to need some extra time to understand what you're trying to say. So save them the time and say it as simply as possible.
Lowest Common Denominator Argument Misses the Point
We've run into way too many wannabe highbrows who are self-described sticklers on grammar and proper English. Invariably they accuse us of pandering to the lowest common denominator by using simple straightforward language.
Guess what? I'd rather have a piece of copy that someone can read through once and understand it than an elegant grammatically perfect construction that people have to read three times before they think they know roughly what you may be getting at.
Even those who read at post-graduate levels can find it more comfortable to read at a much lower grade level. Why? Because it's faster, it's easier to understand and retention is better. Stuff that in your lowest common denominator!
Both the Flesch and Flesch-Kincaid are baked into a number of software applications these days from word processors to blogs. I was dumbfounded when I saw a post today on a respected social media site in which the author recommended ignoring these tools. Instead, this author opined, you should just write for your audience.
Seems to me that's the whole point. These scales can tell you where your copy is in readability and how comfortable it will be for your reader to get through it. If you're writing for a blog that's read primarily by university faculty, rocket scientists, think tank experts and other brain trusts write with a bit more complexity. But if you're writing for us mere mortals keep it at a comfortable level.
Readability is Vital on Facebook
This is particularly true these days when most of what happens on social media like Facebook happens on mobile devices. That's because we're all trying to fit in as much as possible during each hectic day, and our smart phones and tablets are convenient means of reading whatever we can whenever we have a chance.
We're looking for knowledge, yes – but convenient knowledge. If it's too difficult to read forget it – I'll go back to Google and look for something that gives me what I need to know quickly, straightforwardly and simply. And if you don't do it chances are your competitor will.
So which would you rather be? The choices are A, a grammatically correct stickler who writes proper English but doesn't communicate very well or B, a colloquial speaker and writer who articulates simply and well – and thrives as a result.
I'll take a B any day.
(Writing for readability doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to be perfect. This was written quickly and the score is good enough. Flesch Reading Ease – 64, Flesch-Kincaid – 8.6)