The homepage is the most important page on a website, but it’s also the most misunderstood. “What do I say on my website homepage?” After designing over 1000 websites for small New Zealand businesses, it’s a question we’ve heard often. Here's the thing...

You’re a small business, and you keep hearing about how you’ve got to get on Facebook. Although it’s free, running an effective Facebook page takes a lot of time and energy. Here’s the thing – social media doesn’t make sense for the vast majority of small businesses. If you’re not a business that “fits” with social media, there’s a thousand better ways to spend your time than writing status updates. So what kinds of businesses does Facebook actually work for?

Most people think the design and build of a website is a pretty straight forward, one person job. Almost as if you just throw together a design and press the “website button,” and there you have it. This is a dangerous perception for small New Zealand businesses looking to get a website that generates real results. In short, it’s a major barrier to the growth of our small businesses, which are the backbone of our economy.

Let’s face it, most small businesses target customers that are local. Although the web provides a great platform for small businesses to widen the net, targeting national and even global markets, it also has unique marketing strategies that focus on catching those customers closer to home.

Getting a high quality website designed, is something that most small business owners have on their to-do list. Reality check – the business to-do list rarely gets the time it deserves. Every day, there are fires that need to be put out, customers that don’t pay, and the day to day work that needs to get done. As a business owner you have limited time, and a whole bunch of things you’d like to do if you had more of it. So let’s examine the implications of putting off getting that new website sorted.

Having a high quality, well designed website without a well thought through online marketing strategy is like having the perfect retail shop, hidden away from its customers. It could have the best products, prices, service, layout, and displays, and it would still be out of business in a month.