True Fact: 44-to-50% of small businesses have no web site or online presence.

Reasons for going “web-less” these digital days seem perfectly reasonable:

· Number One: “It costs too much to hire professional web site designers.”
· Number Two: “I’m a local retailer or service provider. Why should I be on the world wide web?”
· Number Three: “I’m too busy running my business. Who has time to keep up a web site and answer emails?”

Not Being Online Costs You Even More. A bigger risk these days to your business survival is being invisible to potential customers who do all their product searches on virtual (online) feet … including the locals. Don’t believe it? Listen to Michael Schultz, who (in the interests of full disclosure) is the marketing director for Microsoft Office Live Small Business unit:

“Independent entrepreneurs wonder why they need a site, and think word of mouth is working, but I can’t see how anyone can compete without being online. With everyone using search engines and social media, if you don’t have a site, you’re not in business.”

Are you a local retailer with a carefully built brand name, who sticks with tried and true old ways of doing business?

“Local business is the last, vast untapped piece of online marketing space,” noted Kevin Ryan of WebVisible. “It’s very difficult to convince a small business that, in the eyes of a search engine, their brand doesn’t have nearly the value they think it does … because even local buyers will go to an online source – a search engine, the Yellow Pages directory – first. They rarely conduct a search using the name of a local business; rather they type in keywords, like plumber or diamond jewelers, plus their zip code.”

Even when the locals know your name, if you’re web-less, you’re invisible at the moment they decide to buy.

WebVisible and Nielsen Research surveyed U.S. Internet users last November on how they find local businesses. Results: Number 1 choice of both customers and small business owners when looking for a product or service was online search. Yet, one-half of all small businesses spend less than 10% of their marketing budgets on Internet ads. What’s wrong with that picture? And how can you fix it?

2. Get DIY and Low-or-No-Cost Professional Web Pages

Do-It-Yourself and low-cost web building tools offer templates that walk you — step by step — through basic web page design and are no more technical than dragging and dropping pieces of a word processing file. You work through your browser and answer questions about your business, products or services. Web page Wizards build your site.

Basic web set-up tools are free; but you can add low-cost options for premium services, such as to register your own custom domain (web address) from your business name, to use online advertising or email marketing services, or to offer online payment processing (such as PayPal) and shopping cart checkout services to your customers.

Free and Low-Cost Web Design Tools:
· Microsoft Office Live for Small Business – free site hosting, design templates, web use reports.

· SynthaSite – free basic web design tools such as templates, web storage and page serving.

· Intuit Web – “If you’re particularly design challenged, don’t panic – tapping into some design expertise to get you started doesn’t have to cost you thousands of dollars. Intuit’s Web Sites service can be had for just under US $600.” (Frank Loeffler, Director of Intuit Product Marketing)

· Assign working with online templates and tools to an Internet-savvy staffer. If you Do It Yourself, you only pay a monthly web hosting fee, which could be as little as US $5 per month.

· Get step-by-step web design advice – for free – from sites like: Microsoft.com, Intuit Web and Website Design Basics.

· Don’t forget customer feedback and contact tools, even if you don’t have time while running your business to respond instantly. These “data capture” services are free or low-cost. You set them up to automatically respond to a potential customer immediately … until you can provide more personalized service.

1. At FormAssembly.com, you fill in the required fields for web site customer data collection. Then, whenever a web visitor comes to your site and fills out the “Contact Us” form, they get an instant Auto Reply … which may include answers to Frequently Asked Questions about your products or business (such as whether you sell wholesale or if you carry wedding jewelry under a certain price). You can even conduct surveys on your web site to learn customer preferences, what’s in demand in your product category, what’s hot and what’s not.

Veer West, developers of free FormAssembly, captures all the customer contact information and reports summaries of it to you at their web site. (If your customer traffic levels are above a certain high level, then you can opt for a subscription plan that begins at $9 per month.)

2. Wufoo, by Infinity Box, is another free customer feedback site tool (depending on monthly volume). You decide how this customer contact form will appear on your site: As a “paste in” or “drag ‘n drop” onto your web page; through a clickable link on your site that takes a visitor to a fill-in form customized to your business; or – for the technically comfortable – by downloading the source code for Customer Contact from Wufoo and inserting it into your web page coding.

Wufoo gives you the option of getting traffic/customer contact reports by email or by signing in to the Wufoo web site for an online report.

Advantages of using these low- and no-cost forms services: –Data collected is kept private and secure. –Your business email address is not SPAMMED with unsolicited junk email. -–You spend your time running your business and still respond promptly to customer inquiries.

3. K.I.S.S … Calls-To-Action … Local Addresses

· Resist the temptation to load up your home page with lots of pretty but meaningless graphics. Or EVERYTHING you sell. Or too many different colors, typefaces and hyperlinks. It looks paste-pot, cluttered and makes a bad First Impression.

Speaking of First Impressions. Web Usage Statistic: A web surfer spends 5 seconds (count ‘em, FIVE) after clicking to your web site deciding whether they should stay and look around … or click the Back Button to go to the next listing on their Search Engine Results Page.

A classic design principle – for online and printed marketing materials – is K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Think of your home page as a navigation compass: Concise, Relevant. Short Bullet-Points of Copy/Text. Clear Links to inside pages of your site. (Linked inside pages are where prospects find product details, prices, and extra information that not all visitors want to see.) Hence, don’t clutter the top page with everything you’ve got!

· Put a Call-to-Action on every single web page … not just your home page. These are the BUY NOW buttons that go to a checkout or shopping cart page. They might be a CONTACT US button – like the forms and data capture services noted above – to get more detailed information or a special discount price code or a giveaway item.

· The fastest growing area of online search is happening at the Local and Regional levels: Mobile phones with Internet access (like iPhones) search for Thai food restaurants in a specific area. Or, they let price-conscious shoppers compare prices against a Big Box retail store’s sale-priced sporting goods or unannounced discount on electronics. A customer ready to buy the latest carry-all canvas bag may have seen a nationally advertised brand in a TV ad for the local mall store, or in a magazine. But, that same prospect does a local search on “totes” and “canvas bags” in your zip code/city to find it and buy it.

Local Newspapers, TV Stations, City Directory Listings, Yellow Pages run by the regional telecommunications company, Commercial Directories run by cable operators, Yellow Book Online … as well as the Local Search sites within big search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft … offer free and paid-ad listings. If the search engine indexers – called spiders – don’t “see” a local address and a local telephone Area Code on your web site, then they don’t know you’ve got the latest bag or jewelry or sunglasses right here in (fill in City).

Your email, phone number, contact us links AND storefront address should be on every web page in the same place … preferably at the very top and bottom of the page, where all search indexing spiders can “see” it. Important: Don’t put any local or call-to-action information inside a graphic or image. The indexing spiders are blind to images. Text only.

4. Entry-Level Wholesale Solutions

If you prefer a turn-key, start-up enterprise, you can buy any-sized packages that give you a web presence, marketing services and online ordering systems, as well as inventory, and moves you up the product supply chain. At different levels of start-up resale programs -– and for different package prices — you become a merchandise reseller, supplying other retailers or direct-to-customer markets.

One example of such a turn-key merchandise resale program comes from Concord/Advanced e-Media, which merged experience with wholesale supply, shipment and inventory control (from Concord’s Dollar Items) with an e-commerce solutions provider (Advanced e-Media) , to provide turn-key web sites, ordering systems, virtual storefronts and marketing). Concord/e-Media offers 3 scaled wholesale storefronts as Complete B2B Web Packages, tailored to supply dollar, discount, convenience and chain stores, plus independent retailers and specialty gift stores..

5. Localizing the World Wide Web and Moving Into the Global Supply Chain

· Successful small businesses choose not to sell online; but they keep an active web presence to communicate with loyal customers, attract new ones, and stage special marketing events.

The New York Times reported last December that small businesses were taking creative approaches to luring customers during the holiday spending slowdown, by focusing on special events and online social networking. A specialized lingerie store, Seventh Goddess in New Mexico, used its page on social community site Facebook to publicize a “Sex and the City” party (from the hit fashionista film of 2008), complete with lingerie fashion show.

An Independent Bookstore – local endangered species in this age of mega-chains and “Amazons” – offers film screenings and book readings, all publicized through City Online Social Networks, Web Invites and Emails to its list of loyals, plus through a Facebook page, and from literate “followers” on the store’s instant message alert system, via Twitter.

Then there’s the Seattle Mystery Bookshop – mysteries only – whose owner has had a web site for 10 years. He started the web site “just to have an online presence” in the late 1990s. It has evolved into a Quarterly Newsletter, updated Calendar of Events for Author Signings; and now a shop Blog, with the mystery-loving staff’s Special Picks. Owner J.B. Dickey likes having a virtual village site, even when the shop is closed. (Web sites operate 24/7/365.)

By choice, Seattle Mystery Bookshop’s web site has no shopping cart … a level of security and expertise on which Dickey did not want to spend money. Still, his store web site is an inexpensive investment: He pays a contractor to run the site and update it, while he runs his specialized Indie Bookstore.

· Finally, a web presence, plus online product sourcing, can level the playing field between large wholesalers and small savvy business entrepreneurs.

If your business works at a Wholesale/Reseller level, you can list your business, often for free, at vertical (industry) search sites and searchable product directories. Many offer Buyer/Seller posting forums and allow qualified companies to automatically update their product listings to display price changes, new inventory and special sales.

An example in the wholesale merchandise sector – covering product categories or brands from apparel and Abercrombie to electronics, toys and Louis Vuitton – is Wholezilla. This searchable catalog of wholesale suppliers is part of the Top Ten Wholesale network of search engines, product directories, ad serving sites, industry news and blogs. See Wholezilla for a list of the most popular and searched keywords at the site, to sign up for an Account and to set up Product Feeds.

You can search at specialized industry search sites to source products for your business at up to 70% below wholesale prices. Add to your product category search keywords such as “off-price” “discount” and “value-priced” merchandise. Look for an increasing number of Manufacturers and Wholesalers who offer “No Minimum Orders,” who break typical wholesale quantities – by the pallet, by the truckload – into smaller quantities, and who specialize in Returned and Liquidation Merchandise.

Online product sourcing at specialized vertical search sites is one way smaller business can leverage discount priced inventory. See Top Ten Wholesale and search for product suppliers who meet your criteria in nearly 100 product categories.

See also a new consumer-targeted site from a pioneer in the large lot liquidation and returned merchandise industry, GENCO. Their direct-to-customer site, No Better Deal features No Minimum Order sizes with deep-discount-pricing, (the latter used to be only for major wholesalers). These industry search sites and product directories scale to the demands of both major manufacturers and small business owners.