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Sandy's Home-Style Baking CompanyA Simple Web Presence Allows Small Business to Tap into New Markets You don’t have to spend a bundle to promote your business on the Internet. Nor, do you need to be a technical whiz. Just ask Sandy Stevens, a local home-based entrepreneur. Sandy, who has been baking sweets and savories out of her home in North Vancouver for the past year, recently decided to make the leap to e-business and promote her business over the Internet. Since then, she’s had inquiries and sales from as far away as Mexico.
Building a website on a budget As a home-based start-up, Sandy was working with a very limited budget, so we recommended that she hire a student to develop her website. Hiring a student to build a simple website can be a cost effective development solution for a small business owner. In fact, an eager and skilled student may be willing not only to build your website, but may also be able to design your logo and teach you about ways in which you can optimize your site to rank well in Internet search engines. To that end, Sandy hired Penny Weaver, a recent graduate of Computer Science from the University of Victoria, who specializes in developing affordable web sites for small businesses. Understanding that Sandy had a firm idea about what she wanted her website to look like and what she wanted it to contain -- her print materials, which she designed herself, reflect the home-style appeal of Grandma’s kitchen -- Penny developed a simple, brochure-style web site for Sandy, which she modeled after Sandy’s menu. This ensured that Sandy’s image remained consistent throughout her marketing materials. Basic search engine optimization is crucial In addition, Sandy learned that if she was going to spend any amount of time and money building a website to promote her business, she needed to ensure that her potential customers could find it on the Internet. For most small businesses, a portion of their online sales will come from search engine traffic – that is, people visiting their site by typing search terms in engines such as Google and Yahoo. Therefore, it is important to ensure your site is optimized for searching at a basic level at least. Search engine optimization (SEO) can be expensive when implemented by an Internet marketing firm, but recently more and more web designers and developers are gaining a basic knowledge of SEO and are offering the service at a lower cost as part of a basic web development package. Penny ensured that Sandy’s website included appropriate keywords, meta-tags and title-tags that would help to optimize her site. She submitted Sandy’s site to local online directories, she educated Sandy about e-commerce enabling options, and she helped her register a domain name and sign up for a web hosting service. “Before I started, technology was completely foreign to me. Now I have a website, I can do online transactions using Pay Pal and I have learned about search engine positioning.” A web presence can save you money With a full-page ad in the yellow pages costing upwards of $2000.00 a month, and a similar weekly ad in a community newspaper even more, a well optimized website is a cost effective marketing tool for a small business on a budget. A professionally designed website that registers in search engines levels the playing field and allows a small or home based business to successfully compete with larger organizations in competitive markets. For under $500.00, Sandy was able to build an introductory presence on the Internet. Her site is optimized for searches in popular engines such as Google, and her out of town orders are growing due to her significant page rankings from search terms like “vancouver baking”. Finding your niche on the Web In fact, having a highly accessible website has allowed Sandy to tap new markets and build herself a niche in the competitive Vancouver catering industry. Instead of being confined to competing for local business, Sandy’s online presence has allowed her to branch-out and promote her products/services to clients outside of Vancouver who wish to have homemade goods delivered locally. The result? Having an online presence has created new opportunities for Sandy’s Home-Style Baking and Sandy is thrilled with the jump in business since she launched her site. “I’m now ranking number one in Google for “home baking, Vancouver” and I’ve had three new orders last week because of it.” Visit Sandy’s Home-Style Baking at www.sandysbaking.com Date: August, 2003 Copyright © 2006, eBusiness Connection. |
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