A practical eBook for the owner who knows they need a few good tools to run their marketing, but is tired of being sold a different one every week. The job here is to give you a short, sensible toolkit and the rules for keeping it that way.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 35 minute read
Chapter 2
Your Website Tool
Choosing the platform that holds your front door, with sensible defaults for different sizes and types of business.
Your website is the one piece of your toolkit that almost every other tool refers back to. The link in your email goes to a page on the website. The button on your booking tool sits inside a page on the website. The Google Business Profile sends people to a page on the website. A wobbly website doesn't just look bad. It quietly weakens every other tool you've paid for.
Most small businesses don't need a complicated website. They need a clear, fast one that loads on a phone, says what the business does and gives the customer one obvious next step. The number of pages is less important than how confident the customer feels in the first ten seconds of being there.
This chapter walks through the website platforms a small business can sensibly choose between, the questions to ask before you pick one and the small details that decide whether the site quietly earns its keep over years.
The full chapter compares the realistic options for service businesses, shops and online stores, and gives you a one-page brief you can use to brief any builder or do it yourself.
What a small business website really has to do
Three jobs. Tell a stranger what you do, who it's for and why they should choose you - in roughly fifteen seconds of looking. Make it obvious how to take the next step - call, book, buy or get in touch. Be there reliably, on a phone, when someone searches for you at half past ten on a Tuesday night.
Anything else - blog posts, case studies, team pages, news sections - is optional. Useful for some businesses, irrelevant for others. The question is always whether it helps with one of the three core jobs above. If it doesn't, it can wait.
The realistic platform options
For a service business with no shop, the practical choices are a website builder like Squarespace, Wix or Webflow, or a WordPress site built by someone who knows what they're doing. The builders are quicker to set up, easier to maintain yourself and look modern out of the box. WordPress gives you more flexibility but needs a relationship with someone who can fix it when something breaks. For most small service businesses, a builder is the right call.
For a small shop or independent retailer, the practical choices are Shopify, Squarespace Commerce or, in some cases, a WordPress site with WooCommerce. Shopify is the most reliable for actually running an online store - the checkout, the stock, the payment, the shipping. Squarespace is fine for very small product ranges. WooCommerce is more flexible but harder to look after.
For an online-only store, default to Shopify unless you have a specific reason not to. The cost of fighting a less suitable platform later is much higher than the slightly higher monthly fee.
What to look for, beyond the price
The headline price is the easy bit. Three things matter more in the long run. First, how easy is it to change a sentence on a page yourself? If you need to ask a developer, the site will go stale. Second, how fast does it load on a phone with a poor signal? You can test this on Google's PageSpeed tool in five minutes. Slow sites lose customers before they've read anything. Third, can you move your content to a different platform later? Some platforms make it very hard to leave. Avoid the ones that do.
Five questions to ask before choosing a website platform
Can I change a page myself, in five minutes, without help?
Does it load fast on a phone with one bar of signal?
Is there a clear way to take the customer's next step?
Will my content travel with me if I move platform?
Is the total monthly cost - hosting, domain, plugins - sensible for my size?
Designing for the first ten seconds
The first thing the visitor sees decides almost everything. A clear sentence saying who you are and what you do. A second sentence saying who it's for. One obvious button. A photo that shows the real business, not a stock image of a smiling stranger. Most owners over-design the home page and under-design the second screen. Get the first ten seconds right and the rest of the site has a chance.
If you can't write the opening line easily, the problem isn't the website tool. It's the offer. Look back at the Brand and Messaging category and the Offers and Pricing category before you spend more on the site itself.
How to brief a builder, or yourself
Whether you're hiring someone or doing it yourself, write a one-page brief first. What does the business do, in one sentence. Who is it for, in one sentence. What is the one action you want the visitor to take. What pages do you need (most small businesses need four to six). What does success look like in three months. Keep the brief boring and specific. The clarity in the brief shows up in the site.
What to do this week
Open your current website on your phone, on the slowest connection you can find. Time how long it takes to load. Read the first screen out loud. Is it obvious what you do, who it's for and what to do next? If not, write a one-page brief for the version of the site that would pass that test. You don't need to build it this week. You need to know what you're building towards.
Recurring principle for this chapter: build trust before asking for action. For more on the website itself, look back at The Small Business Website. For the next step on what to put behind the front door, look ahead to the chapter on customer list and email tools.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
Members-only chapter
Become a member to read the full chapter
Members get the complete chapter, the step-by-step plan, the templates and the checklists. Cancel anytime.
