Small Business Website Woes? Get it to The Geek

Did you know that almost half of Canadian small businesses don’t have a website? Maybe you did know that but did you know that of the half that do have sites, many of them are complete rubbish and haven’t been updated for months or even years?

There are lots of well-documented reasons why small business websites are such a sorry lot:

• other priorities; too busy
• no idea how to build or maintain a site
• not enough money to hire an expert
• fear of screwing it up

To this I would add smug marketers and agencies who set an impossible standard.

You know who you are. You are the columnist who sneers at “brochure ware” sites or the blogger who shames small business owners into ladling out their content for free in the uncertain hope that the universe will reward their generosity. You are the agency that proposes fifty Flash pages for the low, low price of just $20,000.

No wonder my dentist is afraid of her website. She’s read the books, gone to the seminars and swigged the (sugar-free) Kool-Aid. And she’s stuck. She wants to do the right thing, the cool thing, the modern thing. But mostly she’s an expert at sticking her hands peoples’ mouths, not at mucking about with her website.

So if this is you (or your dentist or your customer or your mum) here is what I think you should do about the whole thing. Call a Geeky Teenager.

Get the Geeky Teenager to set up a web page for you. Not a site, just a page. Not a work of art, just a page. Squarespace and WordPress are perfectly good places to do this. Get your Geek to register a domain name you can live with. Tell them to pick a theme that isn’t too gross. Give them your logo file and the following copy:

• Name of Business
• Slogan (if you have one)
• Phone number
• Address
• Email (make sure you actually check it daily; otherwise don’t include it)
• Hours

Maybe add a few extra lines just for the heck of it:

• free estimates
• fully insured
• recently pardoned

If you are active on social media (and by this I don’t mean photos of food) then have the Geek set up feeds from Twitter, LinkedIn and whatever else you use.

That’s it. We don’t need your photo, we don’t need a stock photo of a rainbow and we really, really don’t need to see your kids, pets or favourite hockey player either. That’s it. Get your Geek to register the site with the usual search engines and make them write down the password in case you need to change something and your Geek has gone off to college.

Now give your Geek $100 and send them on their way. Congratulations: you have a small business website. Make sure you put your website on all your regular promo stuff and get back to building houses, removing splinters or washing dogs. That’s what adds value and that’s why you get up in the morning.

Down the road, when you’re ready, call your Geek and have them add some pages or update the information.