Every business needs a website, no matter what sort of business it is, or what size. At the very least, an Online Business Card style website will ensure a Google search will find your business, and allow you some control in how it is presented online.

Following is a summary of some different categories of business website.

Online Business Card Website

This is as basic as you can get, and should be the minimum requirement for your business.

• One page website
• Displays your logo and tagline
• Includes basic details such as address and contact information
• Can also include a brief description of products and services offered

Online Brochure Website

This is a more standard website for a small business, and will suit most businesses with basic requirements.

• Approximately five pages
• The home page will be sales focused and feature an overview of your business offering
• Products and services will be the main focus of the website
• A page about your business will be included, such as your team and history
• A contact page is mandatory, and can include a map and a contact form

Content Management System (CMS) Websites

For business with lots of information to be organised and made available, a database enables efficient storage and retrieval of information.

A CMS features an administration area that you can log into to manage the website content and pages. Often an administrative staff member will take on this role.

Using a CMS allows website management to become very efficient, and most feature:

• Search engine optimised web pages
• Document and image management
• User profiles
• Creating and saving draft pages
• Microsoft Word style toolbar to simplify rich text formatting

Blog Website

Blogs are great for generating traffic from search engines like Google. A blog can be a standalone website, or can be integrated into any other type of website.

Maintaining a blog requires some writing skills, and commitment to writing regularly, and on topic. Twice a day is fantastic, daily is good, weekly is fine, and monthly is the bare minimum. If you can’t commit to this schedule, then a blog is probably not for you.

Ecommerce Websites

Ecommerce websites are focused on selling products online, and usually feature shopping cart software and online payment systems.

They can be large or small, simple or complex. The products can be physical and require delivery by courier or post, or electronic with instant digital delivery.

Payment methods can be secure credit card, Paypal, direct deposit, and many more.

Application Websites

These days, virtually any kind of software you can imagine can run on the internet.

The great advantage of this is the ability to access it from anywhere in the world, you just need a computer and an internet connection, or a smart phone, such as an iPhone or Blackberry.

Another advantage is the data storage is in a centralised location, rather than on a multitude of desktop computers.

Remember phone books? You know, those big heavy things that take up all that room on your bookshelf.

They still get delivered to us each year, but they’ve started getting smaller, not bigger. That’s because more businesses are moving their advertising budget onto the internet.

That makes sense when you consider that people are spending more time on the internet, and the ability to search is literally at their fingertips. Younger people especially are more likely to search online, rather than get out the big heavy books and wade through all the pages looking for something that could be found virtually instantaneously using Google.

Those Yellow Pages ads aren’t cheap, and they have to be renewed each year. Ok, so a website is often not that cheap either, but a basic online presence can be achieved at less cost than a yellow pages ad, and can continue to work for you year on year, as well as being accessible the world over.

As people transition from spending time offline, to spending more of their time online, you should consider increasing your online marketing budget to successfully engage your online customers.

Everyone uses Google to search, but are you being efficient and getting the best results? Here are some tips you can use to increase your search productivity:

Leave out small words like the, or and of unless it is part of a title or famous phrase, like to be or not to be. Searching for how long is a piece of string achieves mostly the same result as how long piece string.

Searches are case insensitive. So searching for fred, Fred and FRED will deliver the same result.

To search for an exact phrase or sequence of words, enclose it in double quotes. Searching for engaging online educational resource brings up amazon.com, whereas “engaging online educational resource” brings up something altogether different!

Lastly, to see how many pages of your website are in Google’s database, prefix your website address with ‘site:’ like this site:www.yourwebsite.com.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that watching a video online was a painful experience. Often it wouldn’t work at all, and when it did the picture was tiny and distorted.

Now, thanks to new technology and fast broadband, online video use has exploded. And with popular websites like YouTube, videos get shared amongst social networks and become viral, creating a buzz.

The future trend is for much more video on websites, including small business websites. You can use video to tell your story, make a sales pitch, and create a buzz around your product or service.

With the upcoming rollout of a national broadband network, internet television, or IPTV as it is known, will start to replace regular TV. Unlimited online channels, including many in high definition, will be the new standard.

Get ready for the new frontier of online video!

I was reading an article (I wish I could remember where!) about the remuneration packages of the so-called ‘executive fat cats’, now a dying breed, or even perhaps dead after the subprime financial disaster.

The author used the term ‘handmade shoes’ in a derogatory fashion, suggesting that these super rich executives can afford custom made shoes, rather than the mass produced, made in China type that the rest of us get to wear.

That got me thinking about one of my customers, Gillian Pechey of Pechey Hand Crafted Sandals (www.pecheysandals.com). Gillian sells sandals from her website at a very reasonable price, to anywhere in the world. So you don’t have to be a top paid executive to be a proud owner of handmade shoes!

Business websites can be roughly categorised into three categories: brochure, ecommerce and hybrid.

1. Brochure website

This is for businesses operating in the ‘offline’ world, also referred to as ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses. They have a physical office or shop that they operate from, and they don’t sell goods or services through the internet.

A brochure website is simplest and most economical type of website; it can even be just a home page and nothing else. It’s an information source about your business – like a brochure that you would hand out to potential customers – that contains some sales and marketing copy and contact information.

A website for a restaurant could contain information about the style of food served, the location, operating hours, menus, how to contact or make a booking.

Increasingly, this is how people look for a business.

2. Hybrid Website

Businesses who operate a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ business, but who also take advantage of the ecommerce possibilities the internet provides, are businesses that may have a hybrid website.

Diversifying your business to include an online component can introduce efficiencies and enable you to reach new markets.

Examples:

· retailer selling online
· banks
· newspapers

3. Pure ecommerce

With the explosion of internet use around the world, new business models have been appearing to take advantage of the new space.

Many businesses now operate purely in the online space, with no offline operations. This can be a very efficient way to conduct business, as ordering and fulfilment processes can be automated.

Examples:

· Google
· hotspotting.com.au
· eBay
· realestate.com.au