So, you’ve decided to go it alone and start your own business. As well as being exciting, it’s a scary thought and somewhat of a leap into the unknown for most of us. It’s all about getting it right from the word go, and that includes your website. After all, it will say a lot about you and your new business.
In those first few months, you’ll be putting everything into winning new business and starting to build your client base. That, however, will all be for nothing if when people visit your website they are greeted with a poorly worded, badly put together
Remember, you have about seven seconds to impress someone visiting your website. I’ve touched on this subject in my article about the seven second test.
Your website needs to clearly explain your business and services. It also should reflect who you are as a person. Why will someone want to use your services? What makes you different from your competitors? It also needs to be visually pleasing and look professional across all platforms – desktop, tablet and smartphone. Mess this up, and you could be losing potential custom. A costly mistake in those first few tentative months.
Being a sole trader or small start-up business, you’ll probably be on a budget too. You may be tempted by adverts on Google from companies that state they do websites for sole traders at knock down prices. I’ve seen several examples of companies who state they will call you, have a 15-minute chat, then go away and design your website. It’s absolutely impossible to get the essence of someone’s business and their personality in just 15 minutes. More to the point, they will use predefined templates and just put generic information about you in them. It certainly won’t make you stand out from the crowd, and you may eventually stumble across someone else’s website which, surprise surprise, has an almost identical layout to yours.
My philosophy on helping a newly formed sole trader or small business is simple. Listen to your needs. To do this, we need to have a proper chat about what your company does, and where you want to take it, and not just a 15-minute generic script based question and answer chat. During this time, I will hope to get a good sense of your personality and how you will be running your new fledgling business. You may already have a preconceived idea of how you want your website to look. You may even point me in the direction of other websites and say “I like the way this is laid out” or “I like the styling”. Of course, your website will not be a copy of your inspiration, but it gives me a very good idea as to the direction you may want to take. And, if you really are totally unsure of what you want your website to look like, I will create some mock-ups of potential ideas that we can then discuss.
The last thing you need to worry about is your website in those early days.
Want to know more? Then get in touch with me and I will help ensure getting your website up and running is one less thing for you to have to worry about.
