It's easy for a small business web site to fail -- but take two steps and yours won't

By: Len McGrane

You should hire a web site designer for small business -- one who specializes -- if you run a small business. He will know your need for a site that delivers information and appeals to the visitor.

Your customers will understand your small business web site is efficient if it immediately does two things for a visitor. First, it tells him your business is up to standard and works well -- because the website is both of these. Second, it is easy for the visitor to locate what he's looking for -- because the layout and navigation is clear and easy to use.

Big companies with enviable bloated ad and 'Net budgets can get websites that achieve both these things by hiring costly consultants and designers working out of offices in the high rise office blocks of the city. Of course a small business has less money and has to do some basic thinking about design itself.

You will probably want to line up two things to negotiate with the cheaper web designer you will use.

1. Do you know those small 'animated movies' that are used in some Internet ads, and occasionally take up all the home page of a site? They can look amazing. Right? This is a technology called flash. However before you hurry to build some flash you need to understand the search engines can't read it. A search engine will use what you have written on your site and the links coming into it, to know what your site concentrates on. So when you need to use flash make completely sure you've got plenty of written content about your business and your industry on your prominent pages. Further, ask your designer to keep the flash movies small. Flash can use huge amounts of bandwidth which will slow down your site. People get irritated with pages that are slow to load. So don't hurry to use these movies.

2. Your second discussion point is similar. Graphics always make a page look good. They bring color and if you know can use them, they will direct the visitor's eye to the areas you want him to look at first. But graphics can also be too big, and with too many large ones you'll have a slow-loading page. Tell the designer to ensure his graphic elements use only a little bandwidth.

So, there's a couple of things you can check on to make your small business website work for you. Make a note and do something about them and you'll be right up there with larger businesses and their big-budget websites.

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Len McGrane is a specialist web site designer for small business. He has written extensively for small business web site owners, helping them build web sites that convert visitors to buyers and loyal customers.

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