From simple pictures and text to pages animated with Flash websites have gone through a process of evolution over the last 15 years. Today, as a serious marketing tool, they are a complete non-starter.
You will protest. It can’t be so. Where would EasyJet, Ebay, Amazon be without their websites? Fair point, so let me be clearer.
Brochure versus customer service
We are all familiar with the little bespoke or template website typical of a small business like a wedding photographer or a local accountant. They have navigation buttons to the standard pages entitled home, about us, contact us, services, products etc. Behind each button there is an amount of static information covering every aspect of the business. These are brochure websites designed purely to market a business
Ebay, Amazon, Easyjet and even a local florist linked up to complex databases are non-static websites. They have pages where purchases can be made, services rendered, products ordered. They are customer service websites.
Of the two kinds of website it is the former static type, the glorified flyer, that has reached its sell by date.
There are several problems with a static brochure website
- They are static: They do not give a visitor any sense of your businesses vibrancy or energy. The door is open but there is no one in reception
- The webmaster owns you: unless you have the werewithal and knowhow to run your own website the person who designed and built it must be paid each time there is a change, and you are rarely first on his list of priorities so it may take months
- It looks old: well, maybe not now, if you set it up yesterday, but in a year or so it’ll have the mustiness of a derelict annexe about it, especially if that new feature hasn’t been updated for a few months
But surely that information on my brochure website still serves some purpose? Well, yes it does but it needn’t stay where it is.
The website/blog hybrid : the new web solution for small business!
Is your small business looking to maximise the potential of the internet for marketing? Yes? Then forget about buying the services of a web designer. Go to WordPress or any one of a number of other blog platforms and set up a blog.
Don’t worry that setting up a blog will limit you to a few fixed looks. In fact there over 150 different layouts to choose from in WordPress, and even if none of them float your boat you need only an averagely techy sort to bend one quickly to your purpose. In any case, while it’s nice to look good you shouldn’t be getting too hung up on fancy, complex design. Today an effective website is the website best connected to the outside world and constantly jostling for the attention of relevant sections of the market by all available channels.
On a blog you can set up and easily administer yourself at any time of night or day (no more paying the hourly rate to a webmaster who may eventually get round to it) it is possible to create pages to store static info a la conventional websites (if you must), but also MORE IMPORTANTLY, run an active, dynamic webspace that connects with your clients directly and daily through social media like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube or any other of the hundreds of social media platforms.
Take a workshop in WordPress
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