Taking a Business Online

Taking a business online means giving it a presence people can find, evaluate and contact without physically visiting. For most businesses that starts with a website, not a storefront.

Why move online at all

• People look before they visit. The common sequence is to search, compare, and only then go somewhere or make contact. A business absent from that step is often eliminated before anyone has spoken to it.
• It removes opening hours from the equation. Information about what you offer is available whenever someone happens to want it.
• Geography stops being the limit. Reach isn't confined to who walks past.
• It's cheaper than the equivalent physical presence. A website costs a fraction of premises and reaches further.
• You find out what people actually want. Which pages get read and which questions get asked is information a physical shop doesn't hand you.

Online doesn't have to mean a shop

Worth stating early, because it's the assumption that stops many businesses starting: going online does not require selling online.

For a great many businesses — trades, professional services, restaurants, clinics — the useful version is a small site that explains what you do, who you do it for, where you are, and how to get in touch. No cart, no payments, no inventory.

Selling online is a bigger undertaking with real obligations attached: payment handling, security, returns, delivery. It's worth doing when the business genuinely sells something shippable. It is not a prerequisite for having a presence.

Making the move

1. Decide what the site is for. Informing people, taking enquiries, or selling. This determines everything after it, and skipping it is why sites end up vague.
2. Register a domain. Ideally the business name. It's the address everything else points at.
3. Arrange hosting. Separate from the domain — see What Is a Website? for how the pieces fit together.
4. Build the essential pages first. What you offer, who you are, how to contact you, and where you're located. Four pages that answer real questions beat twenty that don't.
5. Get the details right. Address, phone number and opening hours, accurate. These are the most-read and most-often-stale items on any small business site.
6. Make sure it works on a phone. Most visitors will be on one.
7. Claim your listings. Local business directories and map listings often reach people before your site does.
8. Keep it current. A site advertising last year's hours does more damage than no site.

Online and offline compared

The last row is the one that gets understated in arguments for going online. A local business's relationships are a genuine asset that a website doesn't replicate. The realistic aim is usually addition rather than replacement: be findable to people who search, without giving up what already works.