At Hureka Technologies, we have served over 50 businesses with new website designs and digital marketing services. Consequently, we understand the challenges business owners face while managing a website. Be it for just maintaining the online presence, or as a key driver in your business’s value delivery cycle, a website makes a huge difference, yet it’s astonishing that over 46 percent of small businesses in the U.S. still don’t have a fully operational website.

I say, even if you’re just starting out with less than five employees, you require a website. Americans are spending more than 35 hours every month browsing online. It’s much easier to reach them, in fact, a necessity to reach them via online channels. About 88.5 percent of the Americans are Internet users. That’s a lot of people who could be interacting with your website, connecting with your business online, and bringing you additional revenue.

First you need a domain name. Ideally, your business’s website domain should be similar to your business name. If it’s not available, you can use the name of your area or your city along with the business name, especially if you’re a location specific business. Try not to use numbers, hyphens and difficult to spell names. Your website name should be easy to spell and recall.

Once you have your domain ready, it’s time to look for a technology partner — to setup a website, customer alerts & feedback processes, digital marketing & sales channels and conversion optimization. If you already have a website for your business, take a good look at your website today and see if it’s ready to generate business for you. Is it good for your brand? Does it convert? If no, you need to get it redone.

Choosing a good technology partner gets most of the job done for you but you still have some key decisions to make, first of which is picking a content management system (CMS). A CMS is a set of related softwares that are put together to help an Internet user create digital content. Your website cannot run without a CMS and the cost and effort to make and maintain a website significantly differs with your choice of CMS.

Two options for CMS are Wordpress and Drupal. While Wordpress websites are cheaper to develop, Drupal is a favorite of business owners for the security, scalability and functionalities it has to offer. However, Drupal is complex and requires professional assistance for maintenance and upkeep. The overall cost of setting up a website depends on the features you’re looking for and not just on the CMS you pick. Next month I’ll discuss the features available... until then take five minutes to reassess your business website. Do you need one completely from scratch or does your existing one require an upgrade? Decide and take action today!

Hureka Technologies is here to help any business with SEO, website design, and digital marketing. Contact randy@hurekatek.com or call 215.816.8300.