Well the title should really say “Why a small 3-page website is not the best choice for a good online presence” but isn’t that a bit long for a headline?
But seriously, in this post I’d like to highlight the benefits of spending money on a good size professional website rather than doing it the cheap way.
Side note: you may think I’m biased – after all I run a web design studio so it is best for me to sell you the most expensive product right? Wrong! It is in my best interest to provide you with a solution that will best suit your needs. Sure if I can see your business needs a $20,000 complex customized solution I will not try to sign you up for our standard $2,000 content management system just to get the job if it’s not going to work. But if I see you really only need a $1,500 website, I will not try to sell you a $3,000 system to get more money. The bottom line is the solution we give you has to work for you and it is important to me and my team you are fully satisfied with the results. It’s our clients who are behind our success.
But enough about me, let’s have a look at what’s better when setting up a website
So why isn’t a cheap $300 website going to work for you?
Cheap as in small…
When I say cheap website, I’m not talking about the graphic design aspect of how the site looks and feels (although my heart sinks every time I see flashing animated pictures and Comic Sans font). What I mean the the size of the web site – how many pages does it have. Cheap (as in $300 – $500) will usually get you just a basic 3-5 page web site with no ability to make any changes yourself.
Let’s say we compare two websites, designed by the exact same people for the same client. The first website has only 4 pages (Home, About us, Services and Contacts). The second site has about 15 pages filled with detailed info about offered services, more info on the company background and also a blog section. The second site will always rank better in search engines because it has more content and also incoming links generated by the blog.
But I only need a few pages, why is it a bad thing?
At the moment small website may seem like the ideal option for you right? After all you only need a few pages to tell people who you are, what you do and how to contact you. Maybe you think don’t really have that much to say anyway and certainly don’t want to scare your visitors with loads of text.
This is perfectly logical thinking. The only question is … how are your clients and visitors going to find your website?
Search Engines prefer larger websites to the small and simple ones.
Search engines like Google and Bing love content. Even more they love quality fresh content. As described in my post here, good quality content attracts incoming links because people will talk about it. Here is a million dollar advice: publish a lot of good, quality content and you will do well in search engines. It doesn’t get any simpler than that (of course you also need to promote the content but more on that another time).
A three page website may indeed look nice design-wise but in most cases it will not perform well when people search for your product or services. Most websites get their visitors through search engines, therefore it is vital your website ranks high for keywords related to your business. Small websites have hard time showing on the first page in Google simply because they have to compete with all the other bigger sites with more content.
The conclusion:
If you are thinking about getting a website, plan ahead and think how can you make your website useful to your visitors and clients. If you spend a bit more time and resources at the beginning, you will get much better results and ROI than by trying to do a cheap quick fix.
If you already have a website that is not performing too well, there are easy to do improvements you can make that will make a big difference if done properly. Stay tuned for my next post on how to increase the amount of content on your website but still keep it easy to use.
How well does your website perform in search engines?
