The Small Business Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed in Your Small Business, 3rd Edition

Chapter 41

Creating Your Website

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

—Anonymous

In the first edition of this book, I began this section by stating, “I am assuming you have a website.” That was a wrong assumption in the first edition, and it still was in the second edition in 2008, and even here, in the third edition of this book, at least 25 percent of small businesses still do not have a website. Unbelievable. At a time when it is easier than ever to market your business online to people far and wide, when getting a site has never been cheaper or easier, and when having a site is as essential as having a business card or phone number, not having a website constitutes small business malpractice.

Why, then, do some businesses insist on not having a site, or, if they do have one, not having a good site? The usual answer is that it is too expensive, too time-consuming, or unnecessary. All are faulty assumptions. As I will show you in this chapter, these days it is incredibly easy to create a great, professional website, and often it is free. And as for whether it is necessary or not, just consider this statistic: 8 in 10 Americans now spend as much time online as they do watching television.

Or consider this anecdotal experience: Recently, my wife called and asked me to pick up dinner on the way home from the office. She mentioned a restaurant we like, so I jumped online to look at its website ...