Realities of Small Business Websites

I spend a lot of time with people who know a lot about the web. They’re either building online businesses or they’re 30-something friends who live in London and who use the internet frequently in their day-to-day lives. That’s why I found it interesting recently to work with someone who’s outside of that circle, to help him put a website together, and explain to him a few of the things I’ve started to take for granted.

The guy in question is a joiner, working with wood to install doors, stairs and cupboards, repair furniture, etc. He is looking to develop his business increasingly into antique furniture restoration and uses the web, but wouldn’t claim to know about any technical details. He wanted a simple, affordable website as he knew it could help his business, but at the same time he was a little worried as he’d heard stories from other people about their bad experiences with having websites built.

Working with this small business owner was a good reality-check for me and along the way I realised three things about small business websites that I’m sure many designers of small sites will have discovered before me:

• Getting good photos is a pain – photos from stock photography sites can feel very cheesy and may not be representative of the business. Meanwhile, amateur shots taken by the owner or a friend are likely to be relatively poor-quality. How do people normally approach this?
• How to market their website isn’t obvious for a small business owner – a small business can get themselves listed in various local directories and perhaps ask some friends for links. Beyond that, most other techniques need a fair amount of knowledge and are likely to represent a larger investment of time and/or money than a very small business will to want to make.
• WordPress is a good small business CMS platform but it’s hard to find a good CMS theme – in my opinion, WordPress is a wonderful platform for a small business website. It’s stable, relatively simple to set up and use, and has a fantastic range of plugins. However, the selection of CMS themes that is available is relatively poor. There are a few people providing paid-for premium themes designed for CMS use, but I can’t help thinking there’s room for more. Perhaps the majority of people still don’t realise how effective WordPress can be for this sort of thing?

photo credit: stevendepolo