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Ian Bowen-Morris, CMO at London-based Telnames, explains why you need to be asking the right questions when it comes to thinking about what your business really needs from online tools
Despite national awareness campaigns and Government-nominated online Tzars pushing the benefits of everyone getting online, almost half of UK small businesses still do not have any kind of website. Many still rely on word of mouth, traditional local advertising like local press and yellow pages, but in today’s connected world, things have changed. People have become used to searching for the services they need online or using social media to get referrals from friends and contacts. Much of this is happening locally and increasingly on smartphones.
The typical reasons that many businesses are not yet online are not because they don’t think they need or want to be, but rather it involves time, effort and cost and there are so many other priorities to focus on when building your business.
Those that have ventured online have typically bought a domain name with a basic template-based website with monthly fees for hosting. Once their site is set up, it’s often left idle because it’s either too much hassle, too costly or simply because they don’t have any fresh content. So many of these types of sites look and feel out of date and are therefore of little interest to search engines like Google. Often they look awful when viewed from mobiles as they were really designed for PC viewing. This has now become a real problem with the boom in smartphone adoption and usage The UK also has a high penetration of smartphones (47% according to YouGov in May, heading for 55% next year) and, according to Google, 95% of smartphone users have searched for local businesses and services. Crucially, 68% of local information seekers call or visit a business after finding information on their smartphone. It’s clear that every small businesses needs to have a mobile-friendly web presence to grow in today’s mobile world.
One mistake that many website owners make is ...
Read the full story at b2businesshub.com.
Despite national awareness campaigns and Government-nominated online Tzars pushing the benefits of everyone getting online, almost half of UK small businesses still do not have any kind of website. Many still rely on word of mouth, traditional local advertising like local press and yellow pages, but in today’s connected world, things have changed. People have become used to searching for the services they need online or using social media to get referrals from friends and contacts. Much of this is happening locally and increasingly on smartphones.
The typical reasons that many businesses are not yet online are not because they don’t think they need or want to be, but rather it involves time, effort and cost and there are so many other priorities to focus on when building your business.
Those that have ventured online have typically bought a domain name with a basic template-based website with monthly fees for hosting. Once their site is set up, it’s often left idle because it’s either too much hassle, too costly or simply because they don’t have any fresh content. So many of these types of sites look and feel out of date and are therefore of little interest to search engines like Google. Often they look awful when viewed from mobiles as they were really designed for PC viewing. This has now become a real problem with the boom in smartphone adoption and usage The UK also has a high penetration of smartphones (47% according to YouGov in May, heading for 55% next year) and, according to Google, 95% of smartphone users have searched for local businesses and services. Crucially, 68% of local information seekers call or visit a business after finding information on their smartphone. It’s clear that every small businesses needs to have a mobile-friendly web presence to grow in today’s mobile world.
One mistake that many website owners make is ...
Read the full story at b2businesshub.com.
