Withthe world getting increasingly more tech and web based, a really good online presence is necessary for pretty muchall small businesses to try anddo better than their competitors. However, the thought of creating a websitewhich is engaging and stand out with up-to-date styles, and text that will keeppeople on the pages, often brings financial concerns to the forefront for of small business owners. Recessions and slow-moving markets aren’t helpinganyone at the minute. Crafting a website that not only attracts new potentialcustomers but also keeps them on your pages and makes them want to come backtime and time again, without draining the bank, may seem daunting but I can tryand help reduce some of those costs, hopefully. In my guide here, this tightNorherne offers practical tips and resources to help you build a solid onlinepresence on a budget, I will also mention some of the tools I use myself everyday. And if all fails and you get completely stuck, then feel free to give me abell.
Step 1 of developing your website is to understand your audience and set clear goals. These early stages will lay the groundwork going forward for the rest of the build. Additionally, choosing the right platform to build the website on can have a big impact both the cost and effectiveness of your website.
Before diving into designing and development, it's essential to identify who your website is for. Really get into the minds of your target audience, what do they need? and what is their online behaviour? A good understanding of your audience can guide the design process, which will ensure that the website is a hit with its intended users, and they can get exactly what the need from your website.
What are your objectives for your website? To generate leads? Sell products? or provide Information? Defining your goals early will help in determining the website's success post-launch. Setting specific & achievable goals for your website can also help in prioritising features and content, ensuring you spend the pennies where you really need to, and you don’t waste them on unnecessary features.
Picking a website platform is affected by factors like cost, functionality, and ease of use. WordPress, for example, is a popular choice due to its flexibility and extensive range of themes and plugins, I think at last check something like 43% of the www was using WordPress. It offers a balance between cost-effectiveness and the ability to create a professional-looking site, I use WordPress for all bar one of my website builds, and that last one will be switching over in the next couple of months. Squarespace and Wix are other platforms that provide user-friendly interfaces and are geared towards those with little to no coding experience, making them suitable options for small business owners on a budget. My advice is to go and check them all out and see which feels best for you and your business.
Designing a small business website on a budget doesn't mean sacrificing quality or professionalism. By making the most of the right tools and concentrating on key design features, businesses can build a really good online presence without breaking the bank.
I’m a proper tight northerner, if I can do something for free and it’s pretty much as effective as something that’s paid, then I’m using it. Platforms like WordPress have thousands of themes and plugins for various industries and design preferences. These themes are created to be tablet and mobile responsive and user-friendly. Picking a theme that closely aligns with your business needs can reduce the need for more in-depth development work, saving both time and money. My favourite theme at the minute is Astra, I’ve not had a snag with it yet, and it looks and feels great, even if I do use it as a baseline to develop off.
Keeping your site simple, useable, and mobile responsive, are the key factors for modern websites. Clean minimalistic designs not only help with faster load times but also ensures that your visitors can easily find what they're looking for, which helps overall user experience. Google prefers mobile versions of websites which means that having a mobile-responsive site is a must as it directly affects how high your site ranks in its search results. Ensuring your website is accessible and provides a really good experience across all devices is an absolute must.
High-quality visuals are key to making your website stand out, but hiring a pro designer might not be within everyone's budget. Fortunately, tools like Canva and Adobe Spark are easy to use and have templates for creating web graphics, social media posts, and more. They provide a budget-friendly way for small business owners to make professional-looking images that can really make your website look pretty.
Creating really good content for a small business website on a budget is both an art and a science. You need to really understand your audience deeply and showcase your business in a way that resonates with them. Even with a tight budget, there are effective strategies to create engaging content that drives traffic and conversions.
The foundation of any website is its content. Small businesses need to create messages that hook their audience in while also showcasing the value they bring to the table. Engaging content is supposed to be clear, crisp, and convincing, focusing on the benefits to the customer rather than just the features on offer.
Users expect more than just text on a webpage, it’s no longer the 90’s, despite what my music taste tells me. By including multimedia elements like images and videos can really enhance user engagement and keep people on your pages. Websites such as Pixabay and Unsplash offer high-quality, royalty-free images that can boost visual appeal without incurring costs, but be mindful, because they are on the free side, they have likely been used on tonnes of websites. Tools like Canva and Adobe Spark allow you to create professional-looking graphics and videos for a smaller cost, which will add a greater depth to their content strategy. I tend to use AI-generated images a lot from either Canva’ magic media, or DALL-E , these ensure I don’t breach any royalty and copyrighting rules.
A blog is a powerful tool for driving organic traffic to your website. By consistently publishing relevant and valuable articles, small businesses can build authority within their specific area of expertise, boost their search engine rankings, and engage with their audience on a deeper level. Blogging also provides a platform to naturally include keywords, which is essential for SEO. Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo will crawl your website and hunt for the words and phrases that people are searching for, and then decide how good your website is, and how high up its rankings you will go based on elements such as keywords, but they also consider a tonne of other factors too. I read an article on HubSpot not too long ago, that said that businesses which blog regularly see 55% more website visitors than those that don't. This makes blogging an effective, low-cost strategy for enhancing online visibility and attracting potential customers.
Blogging effectively takes a bit of planning and can take several hours out of your week if done on your own. I have published several blogs up to this point, which were small, and didn’t take me much time to put together. This beast you are reading now is well over 5 times my usual volume, and as such has taken me several hours extra to complete. However, the content I think is a lot better than my previous posts. And this is only after week 2 of the content course with Kustom Copy. There are a lot more keywords within, it’s all relevant and should do my website a lot of favours with the search engines.
Plugins are like your phone apps but for your website. The basic package will do what you need, but if you want to do something better, or look better, there is generally a plugin for it. Some offer features from SEO, security protection, and social media integration. For WordPress users, plugins like Yoast SEO provide good tools for improving search rankings without the need for a specialist, one of my favourites for this is Rankmath. Also, WooCommerce turns a basic website into a fully functional online shop, allowing small businesses to sell products and services online with minimal setup costs. These plugins are examples of how small businesses can use tech to compete digitally without a massive investment.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is critical for increasing a website's visibility in search engine results. Basic SEO strategies include keyword research to identify words and terms your audience is searching for, and putting these keywords or phrases naturally into your website's content, titles, images and meta descriptions, search engines love them, and Google is the fussiest, and gets worse every few months with their regular updates. Google does offer a range of free tools that will help with this, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These can provide insights into website performance and search visibility, which can allow you to make data-driven decisions to improve SEO efforts. Also, tools like Ahrefs and SEO Quake, both addons for Chrome, can point out bits of SEO data that are missing from your website such as sitemaps, and Image Alt text. You will need to keep an eye on your rankings regularly as they change, and when Google releases its SGE pretty soon, it will include AI driven answers to user questions which might mean your site would suffer.
Social media platforms are powerful channels for increasing website traffic and engaging with your audience. Integrating social media into your website doesn’t have to be expensive there are cheap and free tools out there that can help with this. Simple strategies can include adding social media sharing buttons to your page, embedding social media feeds on your website, and using social media to promote new content or products. These actions encourage visitors to share your content with their own networks, boosting your reach and engagement without significant expense. I use Sociablekit to create feeds, and then I embed the JavaScript code onto the page I want to display the feed on. It can be simple once the right feed has been found, but the free versions can sometimes take a bit of time to update day to day.
Before making your website live to the public, it's crucial to complete thorough testing to ensure it works seamlessly across different devices and browsers. This involves checking the website's mobile responsiveness, load times, and functionality of all features, buttons, and links. Tools like ‘Google's Mobile-Friendly Test’ and ‘Page Speed Insights’ can help assess your site's performance and usability and will highlight areas that need improvement.
Your website is live! Hooray! So where are all the people?! Unfortunately, just having a live site doesn’t mean people will automatically find it. All you have done so far is made a tiny shop and plonked it in the middle of a massive city, told no one about it and you’re hoping someone walks past and likes what they see. You now have to promote it and direct traffic towards it.
Fear not, there are numerous ways to do this, even on a shoestring budget. So, keeping your target audience clearly in mind, here are few ideas to get you going.
• Social Media - Set up your profiles and start posting. Offer your audience value as well as telling them what you do and then direct people to relevant parts of your website.
• Google Business profile - Another valuable tool that’s free to set up. Having this listing will help you come up in Google search results, just don’t skimp on the amount of info you put into it. The more the better, also it looks like Google SGE will favour these over normal Search results.
• Email Marketing - Social media is great but you are at the mercy of the platform and it has been known for people to lose their account and all their data and audience with it! So, having your own list of people to contact directly via email is even better. Get started with a free email software such as Mailerlite or Mailchimp and start collecting email addresses with consent to contact them. Then you can drop into their inbox on a regular basis to offer useful information, tips and tricks and make offers. All the while directing them to your shiny new website.
• Even paid Ads can help boost, me again being tight I only do £1 a day on my Ads, because the budget isn’t yet available. I tend to laugh at the Ad provider (either Google or Facebook, I switch regularly) when they tell me that I should increase my budget to at least £15 per day, ‘yeah ok can I have my Ad run for 15 minutes please?’.
To keep your website running smoothly and securely, regular updates and maintenance are essential. This includes updating the content, ensuring all software and plugins are up to date, and performing regular backups. Staying current with these tasks helps protect your site from security vulnerabilities and ensures it continues to function properly. WordPress, for instance, frequently releases updates to enhance performance and security, making it crucial for website owners to apply these updates promptly.
A lot of the time an addon author will be sending out an update shortly after a WordPress update, it’s worth keeping an eye on these too. But word of warning, before doing any major updates, do a backup! I have had it a couple of times where an update has thrown a spanner in the works and the website no longer does what it's supposed to, so I've had to revert and wait for the next update in the hope the bugs have been fixed. Great plugins such as Wordfence give fantastic insights into when a plugin needs an update, or when one could be causing a security issue.
Building a website for a small business on a budget requires careful planning, creativity, and a good strategy. Content creation, using multimedia, and blogging are key elements for engaging your audience and improving SEO, while plugins and social media integration enhance functionality and reach. Before launching, thorough testing ensures a smooth user experience across devices, and ongoing maintenance and promotion are crucial for sustained success and security. By following these strategies, small businesses can create a dynamic online presence that effectively supports their goals and engages their audience, all within budget constraints. This guide hopefully provides a blueprint for small business owners to navigate the complexities of website development and maintenance, ensuring their digital footprint is not only visible but impactful.
From DIY design to content that captivates, every step you take is a step towards standing out online. And if you hit a snag or just want to elevate your digital presence further, I'm here to help. Don't hesitate—your website's potential is unlimited, and your journey to shine starts now. Connect with me to transform your vision into a vibrant, budget-friendly reality. Let's make your website not just functional, but fantastic.
