Will Your Facebook Page Replace Your Small Business Website?

Facebook is making it easier for your small business to engage with customers on mobile devices. They recently announced some interesting new features for Facebook business pages. As they begin to roll out, some people think they could eventually replace your small business website. Others think that they are just a more effective way to drive traffic to your website.

Facebook reports that a billion people visit their business pages every month. And they also report that there are 45 million active businesses on Facebook. The numbers are huge. At the same time (as I’ve blogged about before) more that 50% of Google searches are now done on mobile devices. Also, about 25% of people search for local businesses on Facebook. Facebook is making it easier for your business to be found and accessible on mobile devices.

New features

Not long ago Facebook announced new messaging features to enhance communications with people who like and comment on your business page. Now, rather than having to reply publicly, you can private message the poster. Then last week Facebook announced additional new features particularly targeted at small businesses:

More prominent call to action button – They are testing new buttons for Call Now, Send Message, and Contact Us. The call to action button will also be placed just under the cover photo on a mobile device.
New sections for Shop and for Services – Retailers will be able to list and feature products for sale. Service providers will be able to showcase a list of offerings at the top of the page. Additional sections are still under development.
Mobile-oriented layout – The mobile display of your page will be designed for less scrolling and clicking. It will also introduce section tabs to quickly select what section you want to look at.

The features are starting to show up for some business page managers now and will be rolling out to others over the coming weeks.

Separately, Mark Zuckerberg also confirmed that they are working on:

A Dislike button – He says people have been asking for this a long time. He now sees it as a feature to enable people to express empathy with particular posts. But will it be available on business pages? And will it be an easy way for people to express a negative review?

Why Your Facebook Page Should Replace Your Website

If you are a small business person, you know it’s sometimes complex and time consuming to either build your own website on a hosting service like Wix or Squarespace or to hire a web designer to create and maintain a custom website. On the other hand, Facebook business pages are pretty simple to create, maintain, and update. Facebook pages are already integrated with messaging and with advertising. You don’t need a technical expert.

With the addition of the Shop section, Facebook may be offering an alternative to keep you from going to Shopify or other competitors. Depending on your target audience, Facebook’s Shop section may be as valuable to you as the integration of Shopify and Pinterest with Buy buttons. There is an evolution toward Social eCommerce and Facebook also wants to enable that.

Google and other search engines can index and rank your Facebook page. Then you don’t need to worry about the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your website.

You don’t need to worry about the mobile display of your business, since Facebook will do that for you.

Why Your Facebook Page Should Not Replace Your Website

If you don’t use Facebook to drive traffic to your website, then you are giving up control. You are at the mercy of Facebook’s terms and conditions and future features. Do you want to be locked into their platform rather than pick and choose the best ways to target your audience? And will their features be sufficient to communicate the unique value proposition of your business and to express your business culture and values? Even with these new features, your options are still fairly limited.

Will the Dislike button be an asset for expressing empathy with your business posts? Or will it become the bane of your existence when misused by an unhappy client or competitor?

What if Social eCommerce on mobile devices doesn’t really work for your business? Can and will your customers make a purchase decision from a small photo and description on a mobile device inside the Facebook app?

Facebook still only displays your posts to 2-6% of your followers unless you have extremely engaged followers or you pay Facebook to boost your posts. You may be locking yourself into a lot of payments to get your content seen.

Risks Outweigh Benefits

I think the risks outweigh the benefits at this stage. While you could rely on Facebook with these new features, I still think the cons outweigh the pros.

What do you think about Facebook’s newly announced features? I know many small businesses who started with a Facebook page and then later built a website. But that was before Facebook became pay to play. Would you be willing to rely on Facebook moving forward for the simplicity instead of doing a simple, small business website?

If you haven’t already, please like us on Facebook!

Social Media Marketing for Small Business: Half Are Losing Out

I was surprised when I read a recent research report done by Clutch. They surveyed small businesses about their usage of Social Media marketing. The data indicate that around half of them are ignoring prospective customers by not using Social Media marketing for small business. And more than half are not investing in work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

According to the Clutch study of small businesses:

<20% of marketing budgets are spent on Digital Marketing
only 53% do some work on Social Media
only 45% do some work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
only 25% do work on online advertising

Small businesses are slow to invest in digital marketing to acquire new customers and expand relationships with existing ones. But Social Media marketing is about inviting people to get to know your business and for you to get to know them.

Why are many small businesses reluctant to do Social Media marketing?

I have heard various reasons from small business people I have spoken with, including:

I tried Facebook or Twitter a little while, but I didn’t get any sales from them.
I asked my customers if they use Social Media and they said no or not much.
I don’t know where to start – there are so many social networks and I can’t cover all of them.
I think I have to have a website, but I don’t have time or money to spend on Social Media.
Isn’t Social Media primarily for young people?
If I were to advertise on Social Media, wouldn’t Pay Per Click (PPC) ads be very expensive?

Why is Social Media marketing for your business important?

Increase your brand awareness
Drive more traffic to your website
Get new leads
Leverage the trust that Social Media users have in their friends, family, and people they follow
Extend your message with Likes, Comments, and Shares faster and cheaper than word of mouth
Reach new prospects for your products and services that may not otherwise find you
Provide additional differentiating information about your company, products, and services
Put a human face on your business and let people get to know your people
Find new connections of suppliers and partners in addition to reaching new prospective customers
Target very specific audiences in ads based on interests, behaviors, job titles, locations, etc.
Try out marketing ideas fast and with very low cost to see what works or doesn’t work
Contribute to your search ranking with strong social signals that you are a valuable brand (this is likely to increase in weight over time)

As I’ve blogged before, the way people are making their purchase decisions is changing. They rely much more on online reviews and referrals. When was the last time you booked travel without looking at online reviews? They often research products and services online before they have any contact with your company. They may interact with your online information multiple times during their purchase decision as they advance through their process.

Some small businesses drop social media marketing if they don’t see any immediate increase in sales. But social media marketing is not a short-term investment. You are building a timeless presence on the Internet. You are increasing awareness and starting to build relationships that will likely pay off sometime in the future. Short-term promotions on social media with contests, coupons, and specials can drive a short-term uptick in sales depending on your organic reach or ad budget.

You may not realize that half of the world’s population has grown up with the Internet and Social Media. Yes, that’s right! 50% of the world’s population is under 30 years old. They are connected, they use less and less of traditional media, and they are technology savvy. They are not kids anymore. And those in their 20s and 30s have tremendous purchasing power.

Social media ads are still an under-utilized marketing element by the majority of small businesses. With traditional advertising you are broadcasting to a very wide audience in order to reach the subset that is your target audience. Social media advertising enables you to specifically target individuals in your target audience and to only pay when the target clicks through your ad for more information. Since there is no publication or broadcasting overhead, the cost of social media ads is way less than traditional advertising. It’s also less costly than Google Adwords ads that are only based on keywords on search result pages. And how many people are like me who ignore the display ads in newspapers and on web pages. What better place to get attention on your ad than in someone’s News Feed between photos and videos of their friends and families?

How can you get started economically?

Focus on one or two Social Media platforms that have members of your target market. You don’t need to boil the ocean and get onto every Social Media platform. As I’ve blogged before each one has a slightly different audience with different interests and demographics.
Set your marketing objectives and strategy. Are your top objectives to increase awareness, generate leads, cross-sell existing customers, or ….? For each of the top 2-3 objectives, outline your strategy to use social media to support that objective.
Engage a Marketing agency, consultant, or coach. If you can’t train and dedicate an employee to Digital Marketing or Social Media Marketing, then look at hiring a marketing agency or consultant to be an adviser, a doer, and an extension of your staff part-time. Depending on how much staff time you can dedicate to Social Media marketing, you might only want a consultant to be on retainer to be your coach one or more times per month. An agency, consultant, or coach will also keep you up to date on the latest trends and where to invest time and effort for your business objectives.
Get Marketing training for yourself or your staff. If you allocate an internal staff person for social media marketing, make sure they are trained on Marketing. While almost any younger person knows how to post on some Social Media platforms, they don’t necessarily know how to do that effectively for business marketing purposes.
Look at your Digital Marketing mix holistically. Determine how much to invest in Web Design, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Blogs, Podcasts, video channels, eBooks, Social Media marketing, and traditional marketing. Speak with an agency or consultant if you need assistance.
Augment with Social Media advertising. Social Media organic reach is shrinking. Your posts will only reach 2-6% of your followers. Social Media is now pay to play for businesses. Different platforms will enable you to boost posts or insert ads into the News Feeds of the types of people and interests that you specify.

Let me know your thoughts and experience. Have you seen other obstacles to overcome? Are there other tips you would suggest for Social Media marketing for small business?

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Drive More Business with Mobile Local Search Marketing

As some of you know I live on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. Our largest industry is tourism. Every day we have more than 23,000 visitors with mobile devices looking for local business information. On top of that we have daily visitors streaming off cruise ships with their mobile devices. And we have 65,000 full-time residents that need to find information about local goods and services. After all, you can’t just drive off the island to buy something! These consumers are increasingly using mobile local search to find information. And people searching on a mobile device are closer to a purchase and more likely to take action than with traditional desktop searches.

Mobile Search and Local Search Marketing are Converging

It’s imperative for most of the local businesses that I serve to be optimized for both mobile and local search. But it’s not just for local, small businesses on my island. Large brands such as Ace Hardware in the U.S. and Argos in the U.K. are using mobile combined with local search marketing to drive customers into their stores. It’s no longer a nice-to-have. Mobile Local Search Marketing is a must-have!

Google has reported that more than 50% of searches are now done on mobile devices. On-the-go consumers are looking for local information.

52% of searches on smartphones are done in the car or away from home and work (source: Thrive Analytics)
60% of consumers use a smartphone while shopping and this number is growing over time (source: Thrive Analytics)
37% of all consumers use mobile search to look for local products and services, but the percentages are much, much higher for Gen X and Y consumers (source: Thrive Analytics)
70% of consumers prefer a mobile website over a mobile app for local information (source: LSA Local Media Tracking Study 2014)
56% of smartphone searches on the go or in a store have local intent (source: Google)
63% of consumers use multiple devices to find a local business and 79% of them are smartphone users and 81% are tablet owners (source: comScore study)
24% of local searches done via a mobile app are done through Facebook (they are number two behind Google Maps – source: comScore study)

The data are compelling. These are trends that will continue to increase.

How to Optimize for Converged Mobile Local Search Marketing

So how do you optimize for Mobile Local Search Marketing? I’ve blogged before about Mobile First Marketing and about Mobile Meltdown Day (that some other bloggers have also called Mobilegeddon!) Those posts also still apply here. But let’s look specifically at some things your business can do to be found on the first screen of a local search on a mobile device:

Have a mobile friendly web site that passes Google’s test – If your web site on a smartphone requires someone to scroll left and right or to pinch and zoom to be able to read something, then you need to update your web site now. As of April 21, 2015, Google started penalizing you in mobile search ranking.
Ensure your Google My Business listing is up to date – If you haven’t registered on Google My Business, do it! If you have, make sure information is up to date and that your business name, address, and phone number are consistent with other places you are listed on the Web. Having a Google My Business listing gives you a better mobile local search position and gives you a listing in Google Maps.
Include images in Google My Business – Make it easy for consumers to identify you and your products/services
Make location prominent on your web site – Have your location in relevant places such as title tags, description, and in your content
Ensure images on your web site are compressed and consolidated – Load time for your site is important, so make sure your images are optimized.
Get listed on other relevant business directories – Get a profile on Yelp, Yahoo, Bing Local, other local directories, plus directories relevant to your industry
Make sure your NAP (name, address, phone) are consistent everywhere on the Web – Google wants to know you are real, accurate, valuable and nearby to its customers in search results
Get reviews and recommendations – Reviews on Google and Yelp will also help your mobile local search ranking (make sure they’re positive!)
Create local content in your blog – Local content in your blog will also help to position you for mobile local search
Create a business Facebook page – For consumers doing mobile local search in the Facebook mobile app, be sure you have a business page with name, address, and phone number

These are some highlights for optimizing for mobile local search, but for a very detailed list of factors and weights specific to Google local search ranking take a look at Moz’s 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors.

Besides the basics, there are some other things you may want to consider to increase the amount of business you get from mobile local search. It may also be a good idea to have a click to call button so people can easily reach you. And you may want to consider other geolocation features that attract people who are nearby.

You may also want to consider PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on mobile devices. These ads typically display at the top or bottom of the screen. If you are not highly optimized for mobile local search, this can be a way to make your business visible on the first screen. And if you are optimized, you could potentially have your business displayed three times on the first screen:

Google My Business listing
Mobile Local Search results
PPC ad

Are you optimized for mobile, but not for local search? Are you optimized for local, but not mobile search? Or are you not optimized for either? An investment in mobile local search, possibly combined with PPC mobile ads, will help today’s consumer to find you. Because they are closer to an action or purchase decision than a desktop searcher, this is an investment that will drive real business results.

What do you think? What have you done with local and mobile search optimization? What have you learned? Are there other tips you would share?

How to Avoid Mobile Website Meltdown on April 21…and Beyond

It’s almost here! I’m calling it Mobile Meltdown Day. April 21 is the date that Google will lower your web page rankings if your site is not deemed by them to be mobile friendly. Some big brands and lots of smaller businesses may wake up to a surprise on April 22 unless you take action now. Google announced this change in a blog post on February 26. It may only impact your mobile search rankings for now, but there is widespread speculation that it may also affect desktop search rankings later.

What are Google's goals?

Google isn’t making this change just to make work for your business. More and more of your and Google’s customers are shifting their time and attention to mobile devices to search for information and interact in email and social media. As Google wants to maintain their dominant market share for search, they have some goals they are trying to achieve with this change:

Have a better mobile search experience for their users
Give their users exactly the information they are looking for in the most usable format
Make money – they will be seeking to expose apps and media in search results on mobile devices

Why is this important to your customers, not just Google?

In a July 2012 study conducted by market research firms Sterling Research and SmithGeiger for Google they found:

67% of smartphone users say a mobile-friendly site makes them more likely to buy a company’s product or service, and 74% say they’re more likely to return to the site later
61% say that if they don’t find what they’re looking for (probably within about five seconds), they’ll click away to another site. Half say that even if they like a business, they’ll use its site less often if it doesn’t work well on their smartphone
72% of users say a mobile-friendly site is important to them

How do you know if you are at risk?

Look at your website on a smartphone. Does it appear cut off on the screen? Do you have to scroll left or right? Is the text so small that you have to pinch and zoom to read anything?
Run the Google Mobile-Friendly Test by entering your URL.

What can you do?

Chances are good that if you have not updated your web site in the past few years, you are at risk.

If your website is based on WordPress, you can convert to a responsive theme that will detect and adapt the display for different types of mobile devices. Look for a responsive theme that enables you to follow mobile design best practices.

Here is my top ten list of mobile best practices:

Do not require any scrolling right or left
Make it easy to find your location and operating hours
Use bigger buttons
Enable finding important information in one or two clicks
Create a simple home page with a short menu
Highlight your site search so customers can quickly find information on your site
Add a click to call button
Simplify data entry for forms and minimize typing – use drop downs and choices to select
Don’t require customers to pinch to zoom to be able to read the text on your page
Keep the user in a single browser window

Are you ready for Mobile Meltdown Day? Have you tested your company’s web site? Have you at a minimum put an action plan in place to become compliant with Google’s mobile friendly policies?

Are there other mobile best practices that you have identified? Please share in comments so we all benefit.

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Your Blog Drives More Business Than Social Media

Website+Blog+Search Engine Optimization+Social Media+Email=Business Growth from Digital Marketing

Does that equation surprise you? Of course, it is a gross simplification. But it illustrates a point. When I speak with other small business owners like myself, I hear them talk about a website and social media posts, but a blog and email marketing are usually missing ingredients.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is also usually missing, but you may be able to rely on your website platform (e.g., Wix, WordPress) or web designer to assist with some basic techniques. However, depending on your website provider, they may not counsel you on the importance of content. A blog is a key way to deliver content that drives business growth from online, digital marketing.

Why Should You Care About a Blog?

In 2015 search engines such as Google are focused on creating the best possible user experience. They are continuing to increase their analysis of your web site to ensure it has the information your target audience needs. This and other factors drive your ranking in search results. If the keywords and content being searched for are not well represented and highlighted to search engines in they way they expect, your target audience may not find you online. (Or maybe you will spend a lot of money on ads.)

There is more to SEO than content that can be delivered via a blog. But a key component is content written in the language of your target customer and that hits their keywords for searching.

There are other reasons besides search engine ranking for why you should seriously consider a blog with your web site:

Establish your brand
Differentiate from competitors
Demonstrate expertise
Build an audience of potential and existing customers, partners, and vendors
Make your company more personal
Control your content as social media networks continue to change
Provide customer support for common questions
Collect email addresses

Let me emphasize that last one again – collect email addresses. In these days of social media marketing the data show that email marketing is still more effective for actually getting someone to buy your goods or services. Providing interesting, expert content and getting people to subscribe with their email address is even more effective in driving business results than all your posts on social media.

A McKinsey study found that e-mail is nearly 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined for acquiring customers. A Gallup survey found that 62% of consumers say that social media has no impact on purchase decisions. 90% of U.S. consumers use email daily. Also, the average order value driven by email is 17% higher than purchases that are attributed to social media.

I know you’re thinking:

Wait! I’m a small business owner, not a blogger!
I don’t have time for that!
I’m not a good writer!
How often would I do this and would I run out of ideas?

There are resources that can help and that don’t cost too much:

Blogs on best practices for writing a blog post
Google keyword planner for most searched keywords related to your business and geography
Online tips on where to find ideas for blog posts
Freelance writers and writing services that can research and write a blog post for $10-15 depending on the number of words
Marketing consultants and agencies that can assist to generate ideas and produce content on your behalf

Do you have a company blog? What tools and techniques have been helpful? What results have you seen?

Is Your Web Designer Good or Great?

I’ve seen multiple presentations on what defines a great web designer. These presentations will tell you that there are specific things that define a great website and a good website. They mention–sometimes quite emphatically– that great websites are never created from templates and that a good website design and a great website design are vastly different. I would argue that a great web designer is one who understands your audience and your business objectives to create a visually appealing design that produces results.

Good design and great design are two very different things. By the same token, what separates a good web designer from a great web designer isn’t quite so pat or so easily distinguished. There are a few criteria by which you can tell what is and what is not a good website design. In fact, you’ll read a great deal about what defines a good design and how it is different from a great design.

Good design, it’s said, has some tells. In a presentation at Webmaster Jam in about 2005-2006, website great Cameron Moll told the world that the differences between good design and great design were these:

Good designers decorate while great designers communicate
Good designers believe less is more while great designers felt that less and more could effectively co-exist.
Good designers fixed problems, while great designers prevented them.
Good designers treated text as content, while great designers treated text as a user interface.
Good designers use good typefaces while great designers use good typography.
Good designers redesign while great designers realigned.

With all due respect to Mr Moll, there’s a little more to it than that. The things that qualify as great design in this presentation are things that can be taught and imparted by a good school and ample practice. What makes a great web designer are things that usually cannot.

You don’t often find something that tells you what a great web designer does that makes him great. Most of it has to do with quality, timely, outstanding website design.

Some of it, however, does not. .

Does the man who has clients out the door and around the block, whose every design is spot on qualify as a great designer? Does he hold that status if his work is always late and his attitude is always bad? If he cares more about his fee than he does about your brand, does he get to keep the great designer status?

Not if the customer is wise, he doesn’t.

Does a good web designer whose work is solid, speedy and timely, very good, but perhaps not outstanding qualify as great? Do they achieve that status if they bring with them a wonderful attitude, a willingness to listen, and a work ethic that sees them completing their work on time and under budget?

They probably do qualify as great in that instance, but if the design isn’t precisely right, we’re not going to give them the name.

Can a good designer produce a great design? The answer is of course they can. With the right practice, the right tools and the right input from the customer, a good designer, one who has less than perfect skills can give you a great design.

Just as any other skill can be enhanced by learning, can be built on by practice, website design can as well. Breaking out of your normal routine, exploring and expanding your horizons can produce a great design from a good designer. In fact, mediocre designers can produce top quality “excellent” designs.

What do you look for in a great web designer?

If you’re looking for a quality web designer, what you define as great will have a lot to do with how you select them. For the most part, and in our personal opinion, a great web designer has specific qualities that make them not only someone who produces consistently high quality designs, but someone who is a pleasure to work with and with whom you can communicate easily and readily.

A great designer brings you:

A web design that is visually appealing, easy for your audience to use and achieves your desired business results.
The ability to communicate and a response within a reasonable time span.
A good quality design for a cost effective price.
An outstanding ability to work with you until you nail down exactly the look and feel and business results that you want from your website.
A speedy, reliable, attractive, well coded website that offers your users a great user experience.
Someone who understands SEO (search engine optimization) and factors that into the web design
A timely completion of the website.
A quality experience with someone who is concerned about your brand and your business.

In short, the difference between a good and great web designer is often in the fine details.

In part, it’s in the speed of your site, in the customer experience that the website offers. In part, a great designer is someone who is willing to go the extra mile, to provide you what you need, when you need it, to work hard to please you and to provide you with a few little extras as you need them.

A great web designer does all those things on time while providing you with a unique and enjoyable experience while building the website.

How to Hire the Right Web Design Company for Your Business

Hiring a web design company that fits you and your business is key to your success. You’ve heard the old saying, “you only get one chance to make a good first impression.” That stodgy old proverb is as true in the internet age as it was before the advent of computers. So far as the website user is concerned, the face of the company is that website they see when they surf to your URL.

The website, how fast or slow it is or what it has to offer, is the only thing that they know about your company. It’s representing you. How do you hire the company that is going to design and create that site? In short, how do you hire the company that is going to be responsible for the growth and success of your online presence?

It may be the wrong decision for you and your company to use the first web design company that a friend mentions or that you see in an ad.

Here are a few tips that may help to guide you in the right direction. As you read these, bear in mind there are exceptions to every rule, but they are few and far between. Make sure before you hire your company that they really are the exception.

Review sites they have created. Check out the sites that they have created and how fast or slow they are as well as how well they work. You’re looking for quality of work. Do the sites load quickly? Do they make use of modern web design trends? Is navigation simple and clear? Is it easy to find desired information? Do they work on mobile devices as well as desktop browsers?

What type of websites have they designed? If the site is designed in custom code, or in code such as Flash ( a very poor choice for SEO purposes incidentally) it’s going to get quite costly for you to have them update the site every time that you require a small change or a photo added. CMS or content management systems such as WordPress or Drupal are the best option. Find out if they are willing to design in this type of platform to allow ease of use for you.

Ask them a few questions about search engine optimization and marketing. SEO is imperative today and knowing something about it means creating a site that will rise more quickly in search. The ideal designer has done at least some rudimentary studies in SEO and can offer you solid insights. Those insights are invaluable when your site is designed. Having the site reflect best practices in SEO from the ground up can make a huge difference when it comes to how well the search engines receive the site.

What other marketing expertise do they offer in addition to web design? Maybe you only need a designer to execute your vision. Or maybe you would be better served by someone with marketing expertise who can challenge and add value to your thinking and plans. Do you have a winning marketing strategy? Do you have a consistent brand across traditional and digital marketing? Do you have a social media marketing plan? How will you develop and populate content to your site? Will you have a blog? What will you use for email marketing?

How Reliable are They? Find out how long it took for them to create other sites from start to finish. Do you work with the same designer from beginning to end? How responsive were they to the needs of the customer and how long did it take them to respond to questions and concerns regarding the design or the process?

How do they communicate with clients? Do you want someone who can take your vision or brief, go away, and come back with a completed product? Or do you want someone who can discuss, iterate, and review with you the direction of the project and make any mid-course changes or corrections? How often will you hear about and see progress on your web design? What will be the checkpoints and milestones for you to review and approve? How will changes to the original project be handled? Do you feel comfortable with the amount and style of the communications?

Check references. A good web design company –even if they are relatively new in the web design business– will be able to offer you references from both individuals and businesses.

The Cost of the Work. Other considerations in choosing the right company will of course be the price. Is it fair and how closely does it fall into line with other designers. Regardless of where you are located, the designer should at least be close in price to other designers in their area and of their experience. If they are a great deal higher, it may be that they are far more skilled, or it may be that you’re paying for the name and not the actual cost of their work. If they are a great deal lower, you should be asking yourself–and them–why that is the case.

Last, but certainly not least, take a look at their own site. Chances are that if they didn’t take great care in selecting the style, designing the layout and creating the text, they aren’t going to do that for yours either.

Taking the time and doing the due diligence that it takes to get a well made website says a lot about you and your company. Unwieldy or poorly constructed websites speak volumes to those who may be considering doing business with you. If your website is going to speak about your company, make sure that it’s saying what your prospective customers want to hear.

There ain’t no such thing as a free website!

Many small businesses looking at web design on Kauai or anywhere else in Hawaii or around the world are finding free website alternatives online. But what does free really mean? Are you being smart and economical or are you locking into something with other implications and challenges? Over 6 million people and businesses have joined Weebly and have set up many more million websites on their platform. Websiteooltester.com covers the pros and cons of many of the free website providers. So wouldn’t that be the way to go? With them or one of their competitors? Not necessarily.

In economics the principle that there is no such thing as a free lunch is used to denote that everything has an opportunity cost. The phrase was used early on in the U.S. in the days of saloons that offered a “free lunch” if you purchased at least one drink. It was also used to talk about government corruption. But in modern times the economist Milton Friedman helped to make the phrase really popular by using it as the title of his 1975 book.

The concept that nothing is free serves to remind us that there is an opportunity cost to everything. By choosing one investment you have an opportunity cost of what the alternative would have been. Even if someone does invite you for a free lunch, there may be some other agenda or obligation on your part. At the very least there is an opportunity cost of the alternative ways that you could have used your time while eating the free lunch. Your time has value and that value is determined by how you use it.

What does free lunch have to do with a free website?

There is opportunity cost to accepting a free website. You are choosing a set of parameters, design styles, contracts, and timeframes for a free website that may sound good in the short term, but have other costs. After all, who doesn’t want free? You’re starting a new small business and you’re looking to do everything economically. However, being economical may not automatically mean taking the free alternative.

What are some of the advantages of the free website?

It’s free! (well, mostly anyway)
The tools are simple and easy to use
It’s fast to do
You can do it yourself
The complexity of web design tools, domain names and web hosting are masked to you
There are a lot of pre-loaded designs available
The sites are large and growing and adding features over time

What to look out for with free website providers

Is the domain name registered in your name? Can you take it with you?
Are you obligated/required to purchase other services from the free website provider?
How long is the hosting contract with the free provider?
Is the free part limited to a certain time period?
Will they display ads on your site? Will you be able to control the type and placement?
Will they add other external links to your site?
What level of support do they provide and in your time zone?
Do they provide any system availability guarantees?
Do they run regular backups of your site in case of a crash?
Do they require a setup fee or other admin fee?
Do they charge for monthly hosting and is it a higher fee than the industry average?
If you decide to switch later to a custom site can you take the site with you and transfer it to another host?
They may say they will submit your site to search engines, but are there any tools or guidelines to optimize your site for search engines to rank highly?
Do they provide a branded email address with your domain or is that an additional charge?
How much space do they provide? How expensive will it be to upgrade if your business grows?
You have access only to the features they provide
There are limits to what you can customize to your business
What happens to your site if the company is acquired or goes out of business?

You may be thinking I’ll start out with this free website and then switch to a custom one later. That may not be possible to do or it may be costly. You may be disappointed when you are not showing up in search engine rankings, but another web designer can’t help you without building a new website.

Is a free website good marketing?

Free websites continue to improve and add features, but it may still be apparent to your prospective customers that it is a free website. How serious are you about your business? Do you look like a business that is investing to succeed? Or do you look like thousands of other Weebly sites who have chosen the same design template?

Your web site is one of the key marketing tools to reach your new and existing customers. Are you able to provide compelling content in a way that makes sense to them and that reflects the unqueness of your company?

If upfront cost is the issue, you may be able to work with your web designer or digital marketing partner to bundle the cost into a year long contract that could include web hosting or other social media services. If they are open to that alternative, you may be able to spread part or all of the upfront cost over a longer contract with them. You may want to consider alternatives other than just looking at the upfront price and making that your sole decision criterion.

After all, there ain’t no such thing as a free website!

Couldn’t I do social media marketing and a web site myself?

You may be looking at our site and wondering if you could do all this yourself. Can’t anyone do online and social media marketing? The answer is yes. There is nothing magic here. It is not rocket science. But will you or should you do it yourself? It’s

time consuming
requires learning new skills
needs new tools
is easy to forget or de-prioritze

Marketing strategy

You know the most about your business. You’re the one who runs it every day. You may know the most about your current and potential customers. You can talk to your own customers and prospects to understand their buying behavior and how they search and use information online related to your product or service. You can research and monitor your competitors online. You can create your own logo and brand identity or hire a graphic designer to assist. You can research marketing best practices and new technologies. It takes time. It may take even more time until you have gained some experience.

You could use a soup to nuts digital marketing platform, like HubSpot. It will cost you more money, but it will provide all the tools and already has them integrated. We looked at HubSpot for our business, but thought we could be more economical, have more flexibility, and do our own integration to achieve a higher return on investment. Many small and medium-sized businesses are going this direction for digital marketing. It’s not cheap and it will take time. You will be locked into their tools and integration platform, but it may easier and faster to do it this way. And you have complete control of what or what isn’t done.

Web site

Yes, you can develop a web site. There are tools available now to do a simple web site using drag and drop. It will get you a web site, but will it communicate in the way your audience looks for information? Will it lock you into using one particular company’s technology? Are they stable and well-established or are they a start-up that may disappear?

We use WordPress to develop a web site. You could install and learn it, too. It’s the most popular web site development tool. You could take a class on it. It will still take some trial and error to learn the ins and outs. And there are lots of options, like themes and plugins to consider and choose as part of your design. You will also have to register a domain name, select a web hosting service, and install whatever web design tool you choose.

You can choose the topics and write/edit your own blog posts. You can keep your site up to date both with the latest technology updates and compelling content.

You can also learn and do SEO (search engine optimization).

Email newsletters

You can also do this on your own. You will need to manage your own email list. You will need a design for your newsletters. You will need to write and edit. You could use a service for this, like Constant Contact.

Social media marketing

You can decide which social media platforms you want to use for your customers. You can write, schedule, and post compelling updates. You can decide whether or not to run ads on social media. You can create and post ads and monitor their results. It just takes getting familiar with each platform, best practices for using it, etc. You can also get a tool like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to help manage and monitor your social media marketing. We use Hootsuite so that we can schedule posts across multiple social media sites at once.

Analytics

You can set up Google tracking code for your web site and use Google Analytics to analyze its performance (and performance of your social media to drive web site traffic) relative to your marketing strategy. You can get and monitor analytics for ads placed on social media sites. It’s all available online. You can read about it or take a course. It takes some time and some analytical skills.

So yes, you can do all this digital marketing stuff yourself. Do you have the skills or the time to acquire the skills? Is it where you want to use your management time and creativity?

SEO: Do I care and how do I get it?

We see a lot of web design and other digital marketing sites highlighting that they offer SEO (Search Engine Optimization) services. We have intentionally not labeled it as a separate service that we offer. We have done that for a couple of reasons:

As a small or mid-sized business owner you may not know what SEO is, why it matters to you, or what constitutes a good SEO service
Why would you have a web site and NOT want it optimized for search engines to display your content to customers and prospects? Why would it be something separate from web site design and development?

Yes, we offer SEO services, but as an integral part of our Design and Development services. As a business owner, you shouldn’t have to care about the technical details of how web sites get optimized for search engines. But you should care that your valuable, relevant, compelling content is being displayed to customers and prospects when they search for information.

We use WordPress as the primary tool to develop web sites. With that, there are some other tools and techniques that we use. (And we think you should look for them as part of any web design and development project.)

It's primarily your content

If someone else is speaking with you about SEO and not starting with your content, they are too far down in the weeds of technology. A blog may be your most important tool for SEO. The first and most important way to be noticed effectively by search engines is to have plenty of well written content. It should be written in the way that your customers and prospects look for information on the Internet. It should be embedded in links and images as well. And your site should use good, straightforward navigation links. Your site and content are deemed more important if they are also linked to by others, including social media.

Other tools and techniques

Meta tags provide search engines with places and content to index
robots.txt help search engines know where to look for content
WordPress categories become technorati tags and others can be added
Permalink make it easier for search engines to find your content
A sitemap may also enable a search engine
Search engine submissions may also be helpful to raise the visibility of your content

So, yes, you should care about SEO. Start with your content and we can assist.

Quicksprout has put together this very useful infographic as well:

SEO

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