In our years in business as a web design firm in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, we’ve helped many different kinds of small businesses launch their online presence. And we’ve encountered lots of different kinds of small business owners. One thing can be said categorically of all of them: there are as many different kinds of business owners as there are people.
No two businesses are alike. No two business owners have the same web needs. But most small business owners in Nova Scotia are facing a similar challenge when it comes to getting themselves established online: startup capital.
Money is tight for everyone. Grant programs are full. Loans are expensive, not to mention stressful. No one really wants to spend thousands of dollars on a website if they don’t have to.
And these days, you don’t have to. There are drag-and-drop builders that allow anyone to put together a decent-looking page and be found online. For some businesses in Mahone Bay, Lunenburg, Bridgewater, or Halifax, this may be all they need. If a business is entirely bricks-and-mortar-based–which means that all their sales are in a physical store, not online–then a free or very cheap website, along with a free Google business profile–may very well be enough to get them going.
But there are some major drawbacks to these kinds of sites, and if your business is an online one, you’ll find that you aren’t saving much money anyway. Squarespace, for example, forces you to upgrade your subscription in order to add enhanced search aids called schema to your website. Schema allow Google deeper access into your site’s organization, and also allow your business to be returned in a Rich Snippet, a detailed result that usually gets more clicks.
Every business website really should be using schema, and the smart ones already are. But very few small business owners actually know this, because they may know their business, but not the internet. Many people don’t understand there is much, much more to being found online than just having a website. So, they end up spending more than they bargained for, plus losing the extra hours it takes to learn how to do this stuff on their own.
The upshot of all this is that ‘free’ websites are no longer free, and the more control you want over your own site, the more you have to shell out for it. Your time is precious and you don’t want to spend it wrestling with pixels and page builders. And you may be losing ground all the while to the competition.
Mahone Bay Web Design offers a no-upfront-fees, pay-as-you-go option for site design and hosting. This allows you to avoid lengthy grant applications, insomnia-inducing small business loans, and delays while finding other sources of funding. We can just get right to it. While fees will vary based on your requirements, the bill you receive each month would be comparable in size to the average household water bill.
If this sounds appealing, get in touch, and we’ll get you online as soon as possible!