Despite the many benefits a website can offer small businesses, nearly half of them don’t have one. According to a 2010 marketing study, about 46 percent of small businesses had websites. That’s up from 33 percent two years previously, but nevertheless, the Web is still underutilized by small business.

This is unfortunate because small businesses can use their online presence to compete on a more equal footing with larger businesses. An effective small business website can actually give small businesses a competitive advantage over their larger competitors, particularly if the site’s design is more attractive and user friendly.

When building a website for your business, take in mind the following steps to create the best possible site:

1. Pick the right web address – When creating your website, you’ll need to pick a web address. Domain names are hot commodities, so you may not be able to get the domain name you want or you may have to pay a premium to get it. Picking a domain name is a lot like picking a business name, it needs to be creative, attention-getting and appropriate for your business. In fact, it’s encouraged for new business owners to pick a domain name while they’re developing the name for their business.

If you’re an established business that’s going online, you’ll need to pick a domain name that is easy to remember and fits your business. As mentioned above, you may not be able to just use the name of your business, as the domain name may already belong to someone else. When purchasing the domain name for your business, you may also want to purchase similar domain names to prevent competitors or malicious individuals from associating your business name with inappropriate content.

2. Design a professional-looking site – Consider your website as your online storefront. An unattractive, cluttered storefront will not attract customers. Your site needs an attractive, clean design that is appropriate for your business. Use videos, pictures and graphics as needed, but don’t let them overwhelm your site. Also shy away from overly plain, cookie-cutter looking sites, as it gives your business an amateur image.

3. Make sure it works. Periodically look over your site to make sure it is functioning properly and provides an easy shopping or browsing experience for your visitors. The key is simplicity. You want to ensure that visitors to your site can get to information about products and services quickly, with a minimum of clicks. It’s also important to make sure the process is intuitive, as the last thing visitors to a website want to do is spend a lot of time reading instructions about how to view or buy something.

4. Monitor your traffic. Once you launch your website, you’ll want to monitor how much traffic it gets to determine how effective it is. If your traffic is getting a lot of traffic, that means its easy for your customers to find and the design of the site is likely conducive to a good online experience. If you’re not getting a lot of traffic, you may need to think about redesigning your site or checking it to see if it has any technical problems that may be preventing it from getting the traffic it needs.

5. Hire a professional. If you can afford the services of a competent web technician, by all means hire one to help design and maintain your site. While basic web design is easy to learn, and, in time, something you can easily learn to do on your own, the launch of your business website may be something you want to entrust to an experienced web professional. There are a variety of websites where you can find good web designers who will work at competitive rates to help design a good site for your business.

6. Consider using SEO – Search Engine Optimization can help ensure that customers are directed to your site by search engines. Studies show that most people only look at the first two pages of search results when looking for something online, so getting a high rank on search engine results for specific keywords is important. There are a variety of ways you can boost your rankings, many of which, such as the strategic use of keywords throughout the copy of your site, you can do yourself. For a little extra edge, you may want to employ a search engine optimization specialist who can help you with the more technical and esoteric aspects of web design to help maximize your search engine results.

7. Online payment – Setting up an online store or a means of allowing your customers to pay their bills online can be a winner for small businesses, as it can provide them with a wider regional footprint for their goods or can allow their customers a more convenient means of paying bills. When setting up an online payment option, it is important to use a payment processor you can trust to correctly send you the appropriate funds for a transaction and protect the identity of your customers. Paypal is often regarded as the industry standard for online payment and is easy to incorporate into most small business websites.

8. Alliances – You may want to post links to other small businesses you’re friendly with to build up a mutual network of support. By referring your customers to other small businesses they may like and having them do vice versa, you help protect your small business community while gaining new potential customers.

By building a professional, well-designed website, you can take advantage of the many marketing and sales opportunities provided by the growing proliferation of the Internet in homes and offices throughout the world. The Internet has become nearly ubiquitous in American society, giving businesses with websites a clear advantage over companies that don’t have a way to reach out to their customers in their homes. Small businesses, increasingly under pressure from consolidation and globalization, cannot afford to skip these opportunities.

A website can be your small business’ 24/7 store, yellow pages ad and marketing tool. Although the need for a website is very clear, many small businesses still don’t have an online presence, and most of those that do don’t properly take advantage of all the opportunities the Internet presents.

Reasons to go online

Whether you’re a booming small business with a store and employees or a home-based business just starting out, you can benefit from having a website. Here are some of the benefits of having a website for your small business:

- Cheap source of advertising: Today, more and more people are choosing to look up business contact information online rather than through traditional means like the phonebook or newspaper. This is good news for small business, as print ad prices can be high. If you have a good website that ranks high on Internet searches, chances are you can direct a lot of business traffic to your store or office.

- Broader reach: The Internet allows businesses to break traditional geographical barriers and sell to customers outside their immediate area. If all you had is a traditional storefront, chances are your sales would be limited to the area around your business. With a website, people around the world can purchase your products or services.

- Advertising opportunities: If you’ve got pretty good volume on your site, you can sell advertising space to other businesses to diversify your income stream.

- Open all hours: If you sell products or services online, you’re no longer bound by traditional business hours. Using online purchasing and payment, you’re open 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

- Convenient shopping: If customers can buy your products and services online, they can shop from the convenience of their homes, making life easier for them and building some brand loyalty as they see how easy doing business with your site is.

- Promote the physical location: You can use your site to promote your physical location, providing contact information, a map and directions.

- Market research: You can easily analyze market trends by checking your online sales figures to see what’s hot and at what times or dates it’s hot.

Getting started

Once you decide to start a site for your business, there are a few things you need to do to get started. First, you’ll need a web address for your business site. You can purchase an address from domain hosts such as Register.com or Go Daddy. When picking a domain name, you’ll want one that’s easy to remember and relevant to your business. For example, if you’re running a mechanic’s business named Mike’s Mechanic Shop, www.mikesmechshop.net may be the right choice for your business. However, many domain names are already taken, so you might not get your first choice. You may also want to buy domain names similar to your own, to prevent customers from accidentally getting directed to a site other than yours when they search online for your business.

After you get your domain name, you’ll need to choose a web hosting service. Typically, your Internet access provider will also provide a web hosting plan as part of your Internet service. If your site requires increased bandwidth or data storage, you’ll likely have to upgrade your plan. If your website becomes a large part of your business, you may eventually want to purchase the equipment necessary to host the website at your office or store.

Next, you’ll need to design your website. If you’ve got the cash, hire a professional web developer. They can design a professional-looking site with the right amount of bells and whistles to create lots of interactive experiences for your customers. They can also set you up with a content management system that will let you quickly and easily add and remove content from the site, allowing you to update your site at will.

If you prefer to design the site yourself, it’s advisable to use a simple design as you start, especially if you’re new to web design. Two web sites that can help you out with templates and tips are http://www.conceptfeedback.com/ and http://www.openwebdesign.org/. Another, nearly all-inclusive web design site you can use to build your business website is http://www.homestead.com/.

Elements for your web site

As you design your website, here are a few tips for good design:

- Keep it simple: A clean, uncluttered design is more aesthetically pleasing, uses less bandwidth and is easier for customer computers to handle. Don’t make it completely bleak, but don’t overdo it with photos and videos, either.

- Payment processor: If  you’re going to have an online store, you’ll need a user interface that can help your customers shop and a payment processing option. Check out sites like Amazon and other popular shopping sites to see how they handle shopping and payment and use them as a template for your own online store. PayPal’s shopping cart feature is a great option for small businesses setting up an online store.

- Search Engine Optimization: As in the real world, location, location, location is important in cyberspace. To make sure your site gets a favorable ranking on search engine results pages, you’ll need to engage in a little search engine optimization. You can do a lot of this yourself, or you can pay a professional to help you. SEO consists of making your site more attractive to search engines, thus making it more likely you get a high search engine results ranking when customers are looking for your type of business or location. You can optimize your page by weaving strategic keywords into your copy (Google has tools that can help you find the right keywords), using meta tags, linking to other sites, making sure your site is free of broken links and bugs, etc.