Small Business Website Design Sample Work - Polished Wedding Planning

Polished Wedding Planning

The importance of small business website design is obvious, but spending a fortune for a website isn’t a reality for most small business owners. Luckily, you don’t have to. WordPress is an industry standard software solution that powers websites and blogs for some of the most well-known brands on the web, including the Wall Street Journal, The US Marine Corps, Cornell University and Jay-Z.

Using WordPress for your small business website design assures you of a solid platform moving forward. When it comes time to update your site’s design, you don’t have to worry about starting over from the beginning. Changing the appearance of the site requires changing nothing more than the WordPress theme.  The content of your website exists separately from the design, so adding functionality or changing the design couldn’t be easier.

Affordable Website Design for Small Business That Grows With You

You’ve probably heard the term “content management system” or “CMS” before. That’s exactly what you get with WordPress – a flexible solution with the ability to grow and build additional functionality for your users as your small business grows.  You also get the peace of mind of knowing that you can change your small business website design without having to start over from scratch rebuilding every single page from the ground up. You may not fully appreciate that now, but trust me…one of these days, you most certainly will!

Small Business Website Design Sample Work - Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation

Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation

If you’re like most small business owners, affordability matters. Small budgets are a small business reality. When it comes to small business website design, you don’t have to choose between cost and performance. A website can be search engine friendly, user-friendly, attractive AND affordable.

There’s a big difference between “cheap” and “affordable”.  Making the distinction between wasting money and making an investment is an important piece of the puzzle. If you spend $5 a month for a website, you’re going to end up with a crappy website that no one can find.  You cannot spend $5 a month on a small business website and expect it to create a great brand image or perform well in search engines.  I’m sorry to bust your bubble if the marketing-ease had you convinced that $5 a month was all it took to conquer Internet marketing.

Harsh? Not really. Blunt? You bet. True? Without a doubt. One of the most level-headed, and I must say – MOST RESPECTED – search marketing professionals in our industry couldn’t bite her tongue with regard to the issue: “Intuit Web Site Setup Service Misleading“. Kim Krause-Berg has been a search marketing professional since the mid-1990s. I’m proud to call her my friend and I couldn’t agree with her more regarding the nature of Intuit’s purposefully misleading marketing campaign to lure in unsuspecting small business owners.

WordPress – Affordable Website Design Solutions

When it comes to small business website design, finding the sweet spot where affordability meets usability, function and performance is a challenge, but it can be done. If you’re looking to lay down a solid foundation upon which you can continue to build and develop your site in the future, you’ve come to the right place.

Small Business Website Design Sample Work - Donate Life Day Jacksonville

Donate Life Day Jacksonville

Why do you suppose so many business and publishers, big & small, rely on WordPress? Perhaps it’s the huge developer community. Perhaps it’s the platform’s reputation for innovative and ongoing development. Perhaps it’s because of Automaticc’s commitment to reliability and quality.  Perhaps it’s because WordPress is:

  • Very Search Engine Friendly
  • Incredibly Flexible
  • Endlessly Customizable
  • Remarkably Easy To Use
  • Regularly Updated
  • Exceptionally Well-Supported
  • Unbelievably Affordable (i.e. it’s FREE!)

Small business website design is essential to your success. If your marketing plan includes being found in search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, step one is to make sure your site is search engine friendly. If it isn’t, it will be buried on page 912 of the search results and none of your prospective customers will ever find you.  Your website also has to be user-friendly.  It doesn’t matter how brilliantly a site performs in a keyword search if users run away screaming once they get there.  Search marketing isn’t just about ranking well and driving traffic.  It’s about driving targeted traffic and then converting those visitors once they arrive.

WordPress is a long-established, search engine friendly framework upon which to build your small business website. Don’t spend $10,000 for a beautiful all-FLASH website built by someone who doesn’t know jack about search engine optimization. Here’s a hint: FLASH is BAD for SEO! If you choose a designer that doesn’t already know that, you’re in for a rude – and expensive – awakening down the road.

Don’t Get Sucker Punched By A Website Designer

Small Business Website Design Sample Work - Awakening Recovery Center

Awakening Recovery Center

I wish I had a fraction of the money that has been wasted on beautiful small business websites that’ll never be found in a search result. They’re mansions at the bottom of the ocean. It’s sad. It’s frustrating. And it’s awful to have to be the person to break the news that a $10,000 investment just bought a really pretty brochure that no one will ever find in the search results.

Some small business owners are taken advantage of by website designers who claim to know SEO when they don’t. Others are simply victims of ignorance – both their own and that of their designers. Either way, finding out the truth after having spent thousands on a small business website design is a gut shot of monumental proportions. Don’t let it happen to you.

Design Solutions for Your Small Business, SEOAly Style…

Small Business Website Design Sample Work - Reel Work

Reel Work Sportfishing Charters

Here’s what you get:
  • One Year Domain Registration (if you don’t have a domain registered already)
  • 12 months of shared hosting with unlimited storage, bandwidth & data transfer
  • Unlimited e-mail addresses
  • A dedicated MySQL database
  • Installation and set up of WordPress
  • Installation of WordPress plugins to improve user friendliness, SEO and website functionality
  • Ongoing WordPress maintenance for 12 months, including updating WordPress software with every new version release and regular plugin updates as new versions are released
  • A premium WordPress theme and up to 20 hours of design customization
  • Keyword research to identify the target terms in your niche that have the highest search volume
  • Creation of 5-7 website pages incorporating on-site SEO best practices, including:
    • Optimized text content targeting at least 2-3 of your niche’s highest volume search terms
    • A “Contact” page with a custom form
    • Properly developed internal link structure using target terms as anchor text
    • Incorporation of up to 20 stock images or client-provided images
    • An interactive Google Map (applies only to businesses with physical locations…obviously)
  • Set up of a blog and RSS feed
  • Weekly WordPress database backups for 12 months
  • Set up of a Google account including Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and Google’s FeedBurner service

After you created our web design and it was time to start filling out the content I was fully expecting to get an e-mail from you asking something along the lines of, “So, what do you want your website to say?”  I can’t tell you what a relief it was when “POOF!”, there it was – 1) without me having to write anything; and 2) beautifully written.  Seriously…I had no idea that level of service was included in your package.  So, if your other potential customers are anything like me, you need to market how “stress free” the whole process can be!!!

~ Laura Hearon, Polished Wedding Planning

Would you prefer to set up your own hosting account? Feel free. I strongly recommend midPhase (yes, Virginia…that is an affiliate link) – very affordable, great service and feature-rich. You can’t ask for more from a host.

What’s All This Gonna Cost?

Small Business Website Design Example - WorkLife Nation

WorkLife Nation

So, that’s the real question now, eh? Here’s your answer:  $1250 – for a limited time.  And I don’t mean “Vince” the ‘Slap Chop’ & ‘ShamWow’ dude’s infomercial version of “a limited time”.  I mean ACTUALLY a limited time.

Why, you might ask, would I offer design services at such a discount?  It’s simple.  I want to use you.  There, I said it.

Much of my design & SEO work is confidential and falls under strict non-disclosure agreements.  While that’s great for my clients – and often for myself, as well – it’s not so great for building a portfolio.  That means if you want to get a user-friendly and search engine friendly small business website design at a price you can afford, here’s your shot…and all I ask is that you give me permission to use your site as a part of my portfolio.  Pretty sweet deal, huh?

You won’t find a better value. If you do, I’ll eat my shoe. Okay, I won’t really eat my shoe.  But if you do find a better deal, you should take it – just make sure you’re comparing apples to apples and not apples to, well…crap.