Your business, your website — but what type of site?

Written By Angela Hoskins

Working out answers to some simple questions can help with direction and decision making

You're the expert when it comes to your business. You know your business inside out and what you're aspiring to achieve. In relation to what type of website will work best for you, there are a few questions that might help you make decisions about what will work for you. 

These are some simple questions that will help steer you towards researching the right website for you and your content development:

Young woman looking smart and dressed as an individual.

  • What products, services or ideas are you selling or publicising?

  • Who is your target audience?

  • What will your website offer — maybe a solution to a problem, or products to buy online or in a physical shop?

  • Who are your competitors and how can you differentiate yourself from them — what is your point of difference?

  • What will your online presence consist of, and what functionality will help you achieve your goals?

  • What platform will work best for me (Wordpress, Squarespace, Shopify, Weebly etc.)?

  • What expertise do I need to achieve my goals?

There are plenty of decisions to be made and business expenses to be paid, so time management and budget needs to be considered.

Free hosting?

There are free hosting solutions out there for your website but will this help or hinder your presence? By building your site on a platform that offers free hosting like Wordpress or Weebly, it’s likely you’ll be limited with your choice of domain name (not good for a professional presence) and website functionality. So, if you're running a business, it's best to integrate domain name registration and hosting as part of your tax-deductible costs. However, not-for-profit organisations — say, your local community-run tennis club — may decide that a free hosting option could be the perfect solution to balance the books. 

Will Facebook, Ebay or Etsy be enough to promote a business?

All promotion is good, having a Facebook business presence widens your audience and stands to drive traffic to your website, or your sell your products on Esty or Ebay.

If you create arts and crafts, Etsy is a great platform to sell your work. Ebay gets lots of of buying traffic. Platforms like these may suit your style of selling and managing your products to sell online.

But there's so much more functionality and content you can provide on your own website. Your own website offers the opportunity build your brand. Having your own website will give you a professional edge. 

Angela Hoskins

Built my first site in 2000 and steadily learned what it takes to make websites work. Dabbled in WordPress back then, still do. Since building my first Squarespace site in 2016, I’ve been impressed with the relatively streamlined approach to website design and development that Squarespace offers compared to WordPress. SEO was a major challenge from the start — I’ve spent a lot of time keeping up with what’s required to get sites working, ranking well on a SERP. I have confidence with what Squarespace offers for SEO.

Having worked for more than 10 years in the web team of an inland, regional university in Australia and dealing with frustrations that come with working for a large corporate enterprise, the idea of setting up my own web design business became my goal.

Set up my business in late 2017. Opted for a sea change, too: I now live on Coochiemudlo Island 45 minutes from Brisbane. Love working from home. Love working for small business clients. Still get casual work with the university.

Challenges? The main one is pricing my work for small businesses. Doing quality work, doing the research to be up to date in the industry, takes time; it’s hard to factor in this time to my pricing while being competitive in the market and affordable for many small businesses.

https://sitecontent.com.au
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