10 Website Questions for Small Business via #smallbizchat
Smallbizchat is a Twitter chat group that “meets” each Wednesday evening at 8 pm ET to discuss small business topics. Melinda Emerson and Cathy Larkin are the hosts. Questions are put out to the “audience,” and people answer as they see fit.
This past Wednesday night the host was Yiana Palacios of Design Leap. Topic was website for small business.
These were the questions, which I thought were excellent ones for any small business starting out that needs a website.
Q1: What are some excuses that start-up businesses make about not having a website?
Q3: What do you need to consider when hiring a web designer?
Q4: What are the alternatives to hiring a website designer?
Q6: What are the common mistakes that you see people make on their websites?
Q7: Should a website have a Splash page (also know as a Flash page)?
Q8: What do you say about using your own photos vs. stock photography on your website?
Q10: How does one get on the first page of Google?
You can see how the participants answered the questions on this transcript from the chat. You can read the responses of Yiana Palacios on Melinda’s post Website Design Basics for Start-up Businesses.
A few comments of my own on some of the questions:
Q3: What do you need to consider when hiring a web designer?
Just as you would when you choose a physician, therapist or dentist, find someone with whom you connect well. There are many web designers out there, just as there are many competent doctors. Find a web professional who will help you achieve your goals AND will make the process comfortable and even enjoyable. I have formed great relationships with many of my clients, so we look forward to working on parts of their sites, which helps the site shine. Do make sure, of course, the web professional has the skills necessary and can produce what you want within your budget.
Q8: What do you say about using your own photos vs. stock photography on your website?
In my work, if I have the opportunity, I like to use my own photos. Also, some clients use local photographers with whom they have a good relationship at a reasonable cost. Some of my clients do use stock photos, but I can’t say it harms their business in any way; in those cases, the photos just serve to highlight the content. Other sources of imagery can be charts, public domain art or maps. Discovering or creating interesting imagery for your site can be part of the fun of building the site.
Regarding SEO, I read a great post this morning about code and SEO:
A comment about chats:
Tone of Voice – one cannot hear tone of voice on the internet (unless listening to a podcast or a recorded video) and certainly not on Twitter. I noticed that when the conversation turned to Flash and SEO tweets were flying all about and if one could hear tone of voice, perhaps it was getting controversial, confrontational and maybe after a while a bit silly? On the one hand, this is the nature of a chat; you don’t have much time to think or to edit your tweets, so you type out quickly the first thing that comes to mind. Maybe this is a good thing; if we were all sitting in a room together, we would probably be too polite to let the differences of opinions fly.
What do you think?
To learn more about SmallBizChat, visit How To Participate in #Smallbizchat. Thank you again to Melinda Emerson for bringing us this great forum.
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Well most annoying and vague question I have been asked by various businesses would be “What do you charge for a website?” or “How much does a website cost?” I think the most appropriate answer to that would be “Website would cost exactly how much a new wrist watch would cost”. One could buy something for $30 or $3000 you get what you pay for.
Dhaval, I have learned that if you are interested in having the business as a client, you have to be very tactful in your response to that question. You want to be clear about the costs up front, and you don’t want to promise them the world. I offer to meet with a potential client to find out his/her needs; some have done quite well with an inexpensive, small, rarely-changed site.
But, yes, if they have a certain tone of voice or attitude, it can get aggravating.
True and ofcourse I wouldnt give them the same reply I stated above but I do get people with the attitude like you said and they dont even know what they want or what they are getting and they just want to find out the price and bargain…
The business side of web development can be frustrating. Don’t take on a client if it’s going to aggravate you.
Leora–
Thank you so much for giving us so much love for #SmallBizChat. We are a little different from most chats because we do develop the questions and answers from the guest in advance and we use a script. Your answers to your questions make me think you should be a guest on #smallbizchat on 2010.
Melinda Emerson
@Smallbizlady
Melinda,
Thanks for reading! These particular questions really do help me think – “What are the client’s concerns? How can I address those concerns and be the best choice as a web designer/developer?”
#SmallBizChat is a great way for small business people to connect – we have a lot to learn from each other!
Hi Leora,
Thanks for giving SmallBizChat a shout out on your blog. I enjoyed your comments during the chat as well.
I agree completely with your comment about finding a website/blog designer with whom you can easily work. Communication is priceless when interacting over a website design, as it involves a balance between both tech and creative work.
I am a photographer by hobby (and have done some for business as well) and while a good image from your own photos can work, I would encourge people to be sure the quality of their own images is professional enough.
The downside of using stock photos – is that they may be in use on many other websites. One tip I suggest to my clients with istockphoto.com, for example, is to look for the small image of flames at the top of an image. If you hover over it, it tells you how many times that image has been dwnloaded. Maybe pick one with 500 downloads, rather than 10,000.
Great info.
Cathy, thanks for the information about stock photos. After I tweeted this post, I had at least one stock images company following me on Twitter. I suspect there are others; as more people realize they can make a little money selling their photos, it might be easier to get photos that fit that no one else is using.
Nice to see original content for once on a blog ! super