How do your customers use the web? It’s a simple question, but a question many small-business owners forget to discuss when working on their website. Frequently, small businesses get focused on their own technology and not the tools of their customers. From iPads and smartphones to oversized monitors and laptops, how do you deliver your message to your customer online today?

Review the Metrics
If you have a website, you should have some type of metrics or analytic application on your website. This is a way of measuring traffic to your website, and a feature offered by some applications is the ability to review browser information. This means reviewing what web browsers and operating systems your customers use and what screen resolution they have set on their monitors. These analytics can help you decide if it’s time to deliver content in different ways.

Mobile Style
When your website is accessed through a mobile device, how does it look? Here are two things to keep in mind when thinking about your website. The first is that image-heavy sites take longer to download on cell phones. The second is that Flash animation can’t be seen on all phones. However, you don’t have to sacrifice these features on your full-size website if that is where most of your customers are coming from, but you may want to ask your web developer to create an alternate style for your mobile audience. There are two approaches that you may want to ask your developer about: creating a style for the mobile web browser; of which there are many, or for the screen size of the mobile audience. The way this works is that your developer can program your website to identify the device’s browser or screen size and return the style for the phone. If you have a number of visitors who access your website from their phones, you should add this feature to your website.

Print Style
Websites are designed and developed to work on some type of computer screen, but if you know your audience likes to print your pages or articles, you may want to provide this option. This is a feature many online magazines like Entrepreneur use, but this feature can also be used by educational sites for sharing content, or by restaurants for displaying menus. This is an extra feature; you will need to request a printer-friendly style sheet from your web developer, and it isn’t something that takes long to code. The feature can be designed to be executed when someone hits a print icon on your web page, or when your users hit print from within their web browsers.

User Style
You may want your website to have a certain look and feel, but consider this: How many different audiences do you have visiting your website? Business is about showing your customers that you understand them and are flexible to their needs. Begin that conversation by giving your audience control over some items on your website. Font styles can be a great place to start. Provide users with a way to increase and decrease the size of your font to make reading content easier for your visitor. You can also let customers control colors so they can pick light text on dark background or dark text on a light background. These style changes will help your users make the most of your website, and consequently, they’ll spend more time reviewing your information. Just like each of the other styles, you will need to have this specifically created by your developer.

Take your website to a new level and create styles that will show your visitors you want to work with them.

Are you considering building a website for your small business–or having one built for you? Before you dive in and create one, it’s crucial that you consider your website an investment in your business and act accordingly. This means looking down the road and making sure that the way you build your site allows you flexibility and a cost-effective way to grow the site–and, in turn, your business.

Redefining the Website
A website, though based on technology, is fundamentally a marketing tool. This is an important concept to understand because when you think about your website this way, you will recognize that a website, like your other marketing initiatives, should always be changing. Your website is not like a book, where you print a copy and are finished.

When you decide to build a website with a template service or through a web developer, avoid this statement: “I want a basic five-page website to get me started.” More important, avoid the packages of services that sell you on this idea; it is a way to get you to rely on them for everything.

Changeability Is Key
No, you don’t want your first website to be a static five pages long. The truth is, in two months you are going to need to make changes to your services, products, special offers–the list goes on. Now you’re paying for changes and new pages to be added, and the price tag for that small, basic, cost-effective website will, at the end of the year, be triple what you planned on spending.

Remember that your website is a marketing tool, so if you are planning on using search engine optimization or search engine marketing as marketing strategies, you will need the ability to make changes to your website. This is because search engines give high value to fresh content on websites (along with a slew of other factors), and SEM strategies include creating fresh landing pages.

You don’t know what you don’t know, so here is the truth about what everyone needs–even if you’re just starting out. You need a website that gives you the ability to grow. You need a website that gives you a way to add pages, edit content and upload files. And because you have these needs, the best solution is using some type of content management system.

Invest in Function, Not Pages
Today’s small businesses need the ability to control their content just as much as larger companies. You don’t need an advanced design, but you do need a website that allows you to change the text on all the pages, the ability to add photographs to your pages and embed code from outside sources like today’s social media tools.

Think of it this way: You are not buying a prefabricated, rigid square box with sides, a top and a bottom. That would be limiting. You are investing in the flexible software for your website that will allow you to swap in and out designs and add functions as you wish to grow your website into its own unique shape. Invest in scalability.

A Picture Is Worth 1,000 Words
Today’s template applications and modern content management systems don’t require that you be an expert in HTML and CSS, but if you are adding images or badges from your favorite social networks, you should get a little training on how these items work.

Working with an image program ahead of time to resize or crop images before you upload them will help you better understand how picture size and image size relate. Many of today’s content managers will resize photos for you, but to ensure that your website’s photos load quickly, it is better to resize before uploading. A little training will increase your success in managing the visual aspects of your website.

Remember: Your website is essentially a marketing tool for your business, so it should be able to change and grow alongside the other dynamic pieces of your marketing plan. Don’t paint your business into a corner with a “cost-effective” website that could eaily become costly and ineffective.

Today’s small businesses are just as active using social media as consumers; however, the way they approach social media is very different. Small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) are learning to use social media to communicate with their customers, discover new trends and generate ideas. They are finding social media platforms to be an effective and efficient way to get their message to the right people.

The best way to connect with small businesses is to start with what they need most:
research and information.

Information is available through many social media applications – from blogs and podcasts to LinkedIn groups and Facebook pages. When evaluating the channel for reaching your SMB audience, I recommend focusing on the specifics regarding the business you target:

• What type of industry are they a part of?
• What social media tools are they using to connect with their own customers?
• Who are they looking to for industry information?

This last point is particularly important, as SMBs want to stay in touch with their own specialty. They look to industry-specific blogs, podcasts and online groups, and follow industry leaders on Twitter and Facebook. Recognizing that they are thirsty for information can make targeting and connecting with the small business much easier.

Find Industry Influencers

Begin to identify the information leaders or influencers in your SMB audience; they have the ability to spread your message faster and with greater conversion.

Review what the industry influencers have to say and how they connect with their audience:

• Do they have a blog where they invite comments from readers?
• Do they use their Facebook page or Twitter to connect with their customers?
• What kinds of things are they talking about: updates and information about their business or broader topics like industry trends, tips and fun, interesting tidbits that their audience would be interested in hearing?

Take note of their fans, followers, comments or threads in groups; these will depend on the social medium they use. This will be the audience that you will want to reach. You’ll also want to take note of which mediums are the most successful at gaining their audience’s attention, which garner the most activity or get the most people talking.

Look for a way to connect with these individuals; reaching out to them to broadcast your message is more efficient and creates a bigger impact than doing it yourself:

• Leave comments that show your interest on their Facebook pages
• Follow them on Twitter or connect with them on LinkedIn
• Look for “Contact Info” and send them an email pitching an idea for collaboration after you establish a connection

Approaching people through social media is about talking to the individual, not the mass market. Your connection should be authentic, acknowledging the individual’s contribution to the industry and offering a specific message that is designed to appeal to their needs as an influencer; this means it needs to have a benefit for them.