Small business is the life-blood of America. The vast majority of people in this country are employed by them. In fact, according to the SBE Council, businesses with less than 20 workers make up 89.8% of the American workforce. That being said, small busniess owners – take note of your competition. We live in the information age, and as you observe your competition, without a doubt you will find that some, if not all of those competitors already have a presence on the internet. You’ll find too, that most of your competitors not only have their own website to showcase their services, they also participate in social media. Simply put, If your business does not have a presence on the internet you are falling behind.
As of this year, the portion of small businesses in America with a web presence is now in the majority, at 53%. That’s an 8% increase 5 years, and that trend is accelerating. Not having a web presence these days is like not having any sort of branding or signage for your company. So what do you do? You run a business that has nothing to do with the internet, and you don’t know the first thing about what you need to do. First and foremost, I highly recommend you don’t buy into the cheesy ads you’ll see on social media sites about using some sort of service that supposedly lets you “create a professional website in minutes!” Lets face it. Websites built from these products simply look horrible most of the time. You’re limited to a few (or less) options as far as the overall style and in turn really gives a “cheap” feel to a website. But all you need is something basic, right? A single page to provide some basic details about your company? If that’s the case it’s even more important for that single page to have a professional style and look. You take pride in your business and even if you don’t conduct business on the internet, your website is your brick and mortar location in cyberspace.
At Ebarb Software and Web Dev, we have an ideal option, our Starter Package to fit this sort of need. A low cost solution that will at the very least, establish a professional looking presence on the web. For some businesses, showing off their work in-itself can open the floodgates of new business. If you need something a little more complex than a single landing page, an online portfolio of sorts is definitely the way to go. With this type of website, you’ll have a few pages in which to create a rich feel, while showing off your work in an attractive, attention grabbing format. Artists, musicians, landscapers, construction and many more types of businesses can benefit from a simple portfolio style website. Our Portfolio Package is an ideal fit for these types of needs. There’s an explosion of new, content-rich style sites that love to combine their content with social media in order to drive a high volume of traffic to their site and generate revenue from advertisements. Sites like these fall within our Deluxe package.
From news sites, to fun blogs, and even basic drop ship stores, we can help you build an attractive site that’s sure to keep the visitors coming back. For an additional fee, we can even help you monetize the site by getting you set up with some advertising affiliates. Finally, for retail and online stores, we offer a complete E-Commerce solution in our Professional Package. We can set you up to accept payments online from customers, and we can help you set up an online store to sell your products. Want to sell memberships to your website, or even a subscription service through the site? We can set that up for you to. This package also includes SSL protection, so your customers can feel at ease with their data while shopping at your store. In addition to our web design services, we can also help establish your social media presence! I’ll talk more about our Social Media Management services in my next post!