Website Creation for Business Owners (Without the Bloat)
Think getting your business online takes weeks of time and thousands of dollars? Think again. Learn how to build a small business website using this no-nonsense, 3-step approach that skips the bloat and gets your digital storefront launched fast.
Creating a website as a business owner is like creating a simple expense report; you don’t want to do it but you kind of have to. As much as it pains me, a full stack web developer and designer, to say it, I understand why you don’t look forward to it. But I want to give you a solution that might help you feel a little more optimistic. No, it’s not hire somebody else to do it, although that is a viable option.
The reason why you should at least consider making the website yourself is simple. You want to be able to add and modify the content of it quickly. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your website is done and you can leave it alone. The days of static billboard websites being acceptable for your business ended decades ago.
I know you think that means a huge time sink and you’d be right if you tried to figure this out by yourself. I am going to help you make sure that doesn’t happen. I will give you a workflow that is easy, simple, and fast. I’ve used this formula with dozens of business owners who now manage their website in as little time as it takes to eat their lunch.
Phase 1: Define the Core Purpose
I meant what I said; building a website is like creating an expense report. Even when you use top accounting software like QuickBooks (hashtag #notSponsored), you still have to figure out what you want your report to include and what questions you want to have answered. Creating a website requires planning and a purpose as well. And the purpose is a terrific place to start. It will help you focus your efforts and keep those of you with ADHD brains from going down the rabbit hole (believe me I can relate to that happening).
Write down the purpose of your website in a single simple sentence. Keep in mind that your website’s purpose doesn’t have to remain ONLY that one thing, but you want to start with just a single focus and get it out there so that it adds value to your business as quickly as possible. If you’re struggling to figure out what your website will do for you or how to word it, consider answering these questions:
- What does your business do?
- Who are your customers and what do they want from your business?
- How will they purchase what you are selling?
Answering these questions will actually help with planning the “hero text” of your website. If you’re not aware, that just means the big bold wording that businesses use to make customers want to stay. Right now you might be thinking, “that’s the only prep I need?”, especially if you’ve worked with a professional developer or designer before. You’re probably thinking of the million and one details that go into website design and functionality. But the truth is that things like color schemes, branding, image placement and layout are all things you use to drive forward the purpose of your website. So get out that piece of paper and take a moment and write down the one purpose you want to start your website fulfilling. The rest will fall into place properly after that.
Phase 2: Planning Only The Essential Pages
I want you to take a deep breath and say “I promise not to build 10 pages for my website.” I have had to nix more than a few websites of business owners the moment we moved to step two. Right now you just want to create the most streamlined website possible. Sounds great right? Well hold on because I bet you’re already thinking you need pages that you really don’t. Do me a favor and write down a title for each page of your website.
Once you’re done, take another breath and cross off the ones that don’t fully fulfill your website’s written purpose. And to help you along your way, here is a list of the most common “bloat pages” that you can cross off your list right now.
| Page Type or Title | What The Page Does | Why You Don't Need It |
|---|---|---|
| About Us | These explain your business, discuss its rich history, helps customers understand your mission, and act as placeholders for power statements and company directories | Unless your customers are journalists, they most likely do not care very much about how your business came about, who runs the show, or what your overall vision on how you will change the world is. They value your product or service and these pages will be the least visited. They hurt your SEO by creating pages that users go to and leave very quickly and will often be neglected. |
| Testimonials/Reviews | These are ENTIRE pages just dedicated to what people think about your business, single products, or services. | Customers again rarely click on reviews LINKS, because they know they are going to be marketed to and often review pages are used by sketchy businesses to just dump a bunch of PR friendly copy onto a page to convince customers to do business with them without any actual substance. Testimonials and reviews are better used sparingly and thoughtfully. Instead use the best or top 3 testimonials on your home page and services pages. That way you can directly correlate a review or testimonial with your business or the product or service the customer is talking about. |
| FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) | Lists the most common questions and their answers in a list or expanding accordion format. | These pages are usually massive and they just keep growing. Often you will forget questions that are no longer relevant. Business owners often rely on these pages to patch up confusion created by the website or business rather than addressing the issues directly. Most often frequently asked questions by customers should drive actual content changes and can help enhance the website so these FAQ pages squander a huge opportunity to make your website shine. |
| News or Press Releases | Acts like a professional blog with extra steps. Often they are the temporary announcements and events for your business, and most of the time they are minor additions. | You're probably a small business and don't need to have have press releases for investors to review. Keep in mind your purpose, these pages are almost never visited by your customers. Additionally, because these press releases are often and frequent they become the bulk of the website, making it very likely that customers will be directed to these pages by search engines rather than the product or service pages you really want them to visit. And don't forget, you'll very likely forget to update them. This will cause confusion for your customers and make the business look dated or abandoned because the pages that get served most are often the ones that are oldest. These updates are instead better served on social media and you can install social media feed widgets to your website if you really feel like it. |
| Meet the Team | Shows the headshots or images of the team along with quirky fun facts and bios for all or some of the employees of your company. | Establishing expertise by appealing to authority is a documented logical fallacy. There are a few exceptions to this like law firms, medical clinics, or real estate agencies. But for nearly everybody else, who you employee will not affect the decision of your customers doing business with you as far as your website's flow is concerned. Plus, if you have these pages you should be updating them. In this case its much harder because it will depend on many people's efforts not just your own. |
Once you have grieved the loss of pages you haven’t even created yet, lets talk about the pages that you need to make sure you have. Now the most common purpose of websites for small businesses is selling things online. I will get to how to plan out the pages needed for that in a second. Right now I just want to go for the bare bones pages your website will need. In my opinion you will need the following regardless of the kind of business you have:
- A home page
- A blog
- Legal Pages (Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy)
These satisfy the most essential functions of a website. The home page acts like the lobby of a brick and mortar business, allowing customers to know they are in the right place and to feel welcome and excited to do business with you. A blog is essential for being found on search engines and will allow you to interact with both potential and real customers on topics that you choose, and the legal pages allow you to ensure your actions online are legally protected and help customers know you take their rights seriously, even if most of them don’t read them.
Planning for Ecommerce
Now let’s talk about planning out selling things online. This is known as ecommerce. If you are going to go that route, right now I just want you to write down “ecommerce pages” because you don’t want to worry about building every common ecommerce section just yet. We will get to that in step 3. But the biggest thing you need to understand is that you will need to inventory all the products and services you are planning on selling and how you currently are fulfilling those orders. That way when you move onto the next and final step you can implement as few changes as possible to your business model that has been working.
Phase 3: Decide Which Tools You will Use and Start Building
For most business owners this is the most daunting aspect of building the website because up till now everything has been concepts and unlimited brainstorming. I did that on purpose because if you just started building the website without focus, you’d likely end up disappointed at some point that you couldn’t do something you really wanted to do. I have found that this is where most business owners abandon the project. I get it, I know this looks scary. But you can breathe. Think of this phase as a three step process:
- Build - Create each of the pages you planned out without filling in a bunch of the content, just enough to be able to framework the links and allow you to refer to each page.
- Populate - Add the content to the pages. This includes the copy, images, and links to the other services. You don’t want to focus on making it super attractive yet. You just want a layout that is easy to navigate through and will work on desktop as well as mobile devices.
- Polish - This is the fun part and a word of warning, this can be where your ADHD brain is going to time travel.
My Recommendations
I am going to give you a few choices of tools for various types of businesses and people. First you need to know a few key terms to navigate whatever tool you use. Regardless of the type of business you will want to have a tool to build the website, somewhere for the website to live, a way for people to find it, and a way to update and maintain the website. Each of these items has a specific name in web development that tools will refer to constantly.
| Term | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Domain | This is the base name of your website. It acts like an address that people can type into browsers to visit your website. It also is the last part of professional email addresses. So for example, clevoro.com is the domain of the website you are reading this guide on and my email address is actually tyler@clevoro.com. |
| Hosting | This is the physical machine that holds the website and serves it to people, which is why some people call it the server too. |
| Search Engine Optimization (SEO) | The enormous list of things you can do to optimize your website's performance and content to be more attractive and discoverable by search engine. |
| Social Media | Online services frequented by people that share content and interests. These are by far the most common place where people are when they are online. |
| Content Management System (CMS) | Software that streamlines and optimizes both the creation of websites and updates to both the content and layout of them. CMS providers often have prebuilt tools or plugins that help with common and complex web features like ecommerce or social media feeds. |
All-In-One Solutions (Best Starting Point)
Many services offer all-in-one solutions that walk you through the process of building out the website and you fill in your own content along the way. I have found this is a terrific place for many business owners but they often push services that you don’t need or want right now. So keep in mind your planning so you don’t fall victim to that. Keeping your website as simple as possible will help make updates much simpler in the future.
There are a bunch of providers like this. And while I am not currently sponsored by any of them nor am I using any of these services currently for my own website, I highly recommend you look at the following providers and compare their compatibility with yourself.
Don’t expect to be with these services forever. It’s pretty easy to outgrow them if you’re really successful. If you’re worried about that and you’re an online retailer, I would recommend you start with Shopify because out of the 3, they are the most specialized and complete in rich features and add-ons when compared to others.
For everybody else, you eventually will want to do something with your website that these providers cannot give you. By that time you probably will have hired somebody to manage your online presence so when that happens, ensure they are familiar with the next set up tools.
CMS Tools
If you need more control and the ability to create things that aren’t readily available with all-in-one providers, you will still want to have a CMS to help with content. This process takes a lot more to put together. If you’re migrating from the all-in-one stage, you likely already have a domain. But you’ll have to likely recreate the website in the new tool, which is fine. You can often do this while leaving your old website online.
By far the most successful CMS to use is WordPress. This is because it has everything a successful website is built right into it. While many people used to associate WordPress with blogs, it has evolved into a rich web presence that nearly every hosting provider now includes an easy installation tool for. If you decide to go that route, I highly recommend using the Elementor or Divi plugins to build the website.
At this point it would also be a very good idea to hire a full time employee to build and manage the website. This is because there are aspects of website development and maintenance that are better left to experts who understand SEO, online presence, and performance. The all-in-one tools often have tools built into them that allow you to put those concerns to the side.
Wrapping it Up
Make sure that you start that website building process. This is easily something that will give your business a lot of value and help you be more profitable. As a business owner you’re likely familiar with the concept of opportunity cost. In my experience, businesses who really commit to this process and launch quality websites experience massive growth and profitability. And all it really takes is planning and focus. The technical skills will come later and keep watching this blog for more tips to help enhance your website. I promise I won’t leave you stranded.
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Sign in to commentMaybe also add webshop/woocommerce to your wordpress section ducky, cheers and keep up the good work! 🍻
Thank you, I'll be sure to add that as soon as the discord bot learns to behave.
Do you think this is simple enough or do you have other questions?