Establishing an Online Presence for Your Small Business, Part 1 of 3

According to a recent Kelsey Group Study approximately 97% of consumers use the Internet to research local products and services. This number proves the necessity for all businesses – regardless of size and services – to have an online presence to generate new customers and retain existing ones. This surprising statistic prompted AE Consulting to write a blog series highlighting our top three approaches for businesses to establish their presence online.

In this series of articles, we’d like to outline your options and let you choose which suits your needs and budget best – the recommendation is that you’ve opted to do at least one of the options suggested once you’re done reading the entire series.

The most common and popular form of online presence is a website. The ideal option is to hire a professional services company to design and develop your business’s website design and content. This option is best suited for companies that intend to be established and growing for more than two years. If you intend to dissolve your business under two years, we’d recommend taking a more inexpensive route when establishing your web presence (Learn about these options in parts two and three of our series). Hiring these services is an investment, but one that will prove its return in a matter of months.

Before you hire a web designer it is important for you to understand what makes a successful website. The overall design should follow basic design principles to garner positive attention and relay your company’s message (learn about website design). Your website must also be strategically laid out for usability to promote user experience (learn about usability mistakes). Most importantly, your website needs to utilize search engine optimization (SEO) – implementing various design and content strategies to position your website to appear toward the top of a list when someone conducts a search. SEO ensures that people actually visit your website, providing your business a return on investment (learn about SEO). Without strategic writing, structure, links, meta-tags, etc., your site will be a dime a dozen in cyberspace.

Web design prices vary depending on skill and amount of work involved. If you do decide to go this route, do your research. Find a web designer that has extensive experience with website design, usability, and SEO tactics (learn about considerations when hiring a web developer).

AE would like to know your thoughts. What challenges are preventing your company from developing a website? This concludes part one of our three-part series. Next, we will discuss the second option for establishing your business’s online presence if a professionally developed site is not your ideal option.