The great thing about the Internet… well, let me correct that: ONE of the many, many great things about the Internet, is that it allows you to be local as well as global.

As a Web Services company, we have customers from many different countries around the world. At the same time, though, we are proud of our locality – you only have to look at our company name to see that. As time has passed, we have helped a great number of local London small businesses build their web presence, even offering free websites to businesses in the W10 and W11 postcode districts. This initiative came from a strong belief that a company should give something back to the community that supports it. We want local businesses to thrive, because that does us all good.

While we absolutely pride ourselves on excellent service by email and phone no matter where you are, we also enjoy meeting our clients face to face. If you’re in London and looking for London Web designers, we’d be delighted to see you and really get to know you and your company.

As a small business owner, it makes sense to outsource certain work. If you need a new shop frontage, you call a sign-maker; if your electrics are on the blink, you find an electrician. The chances are that you also paid out for a website.

If your website provider was like most, this was a one-off transaction. You paid a set amount; they built your site and that was the end of it. For many businesses, this seems fine. You have an online presence; customers can find your contact details and that is enough.

Stop to consider for a while, though, and it doesn’t take much to realise that your website could be doing so much more for you. With a little expertise, you could be optimising it for the search engines, ensuring that it comes out near the top in the searches most likely to bring you solid customers.

You could be finding new customers and engaging with existing ones on social media like Facebook and Twitter. And, if your business merits it, you could be updating your website regularly to keep customers returning for special promotions, or goods tied in to festive occasions.

These things all take time and expertise – and that’s why many small businesses will simply put up with a small, static website that does nothing more than sit there. The good news is, it’s relatively easy to get ahead of your competitors, even if you don’t have that time or the required knowledge. The trick is to outsource.

Take a look at our managed internet services for small businesses page and you will see that an active internet profile can be yours at a very reasonable price. We believe it will pay for itself.

Has anyone ever told you you need a CMS? For many of us, the only answer to that would be a blank face as we tried to take in one more piece of jargon.

Yet, CMS might just be the three most important initials you will come across, if you are trying to start up or run a small business. All the more so, if you understand the importance of having an online presence, but not how to go about it.

When you discover that they stand for Content Management System, you might begin to see the benefit. Effectively, a CMS is a system that allows even the least web-savvy among us to log in and make changes to a website. The interface tends to be extremely simple, so that little web knowledge is required, instead leaving the user time to think more about content and how best to present the business.

If you foresee that your website will need to change frequently – as you add new stock, say, or because of changing circumstances – a CMS is the easiest way forward. And because we understand that small businesses often run to very tight margins, we offer a very economical CMS package. What’s more, it even has a blog thrown in, so you can key into the cutting edge of social media.

Best of all, next time someone asks you if you have a CMS, you can look them straight in the eye and say ‘yes’.

How we love seeing the incredulous looks on our customers’ – and competitors’ – faces when we tell them that we offer free website design!

Not much is free in this day and age: bus travel for old age pensioners, the kind of newspapers you get handed at stations, and the samples they hand out at supermarkets spring to mind, but, in general, we live in a society where anything free is treated with a great deal of mistrust.

Well, it’s certainly true that most things have a hidden price. Some might say that our incredible free websites offer comes with strings attached. In a way, we agree – but they are very small strings, and the important thing is that we have laid them all out for you to see for yourself. At the foot of our free websites offer page you will see a small section titled ‘What’s the catch?’.

Personally, we don’t think there’s much of a catch at all – but we like to be transparent. Now you can decide for yourself whether this is a free lunch, or whether there is, as the saying tells us, really no such thing. Meanwhile, if your start-up business needs a website, you know where to come.

Large companies employ people full-time to design their brand. You, as a small business owner, are likely to have slightly fewer resources to hand.

It’s tempting to think it can’t matter, and write off web design as an unnecessary expense – but put yourself in the shoes of your customer for a moment. Isn’t a slick, well-presented site going to earn your trust faster than a generic, bland one? You put time and effort into presenting your shop-front and display windows: your website requires the same amount of thought.

Fortunately, excellent design needn’t cost an arm and a leg. Our website design packages for small businesses allow you to select from a large portfolio of off-the-peg designs, or to have one put together especially for you – all at very agreeable prices. Believe us when we say that it is really worth this small investment. You may not notice the benefit right away, but you will certainly see a return on your investment as time passes.

BIA/Kelsey, a US advisory service, recently commissioned research into the usage of the Internet for local shopping – and the results were interesting.

Here are some of their findings, and our thoughts:

• 90 percent of users use search engines … and the other 10% are liars? Seriously, though, this is no surprise. We know that almost all web usage will start with a search. It’s just one more compelling reason why your site needs optimisation to compete.
• 48 percent use Internet Yellow Pages – indicating that while the Internet is becoming more and more of a handy tool, many users still prefer to find information online, and then call or make a visit. Or do they? It’s also possible that many businesses do not have that crucial online presence that would allow for the convenience of dropping you an email. That would also allow you to respond at a time that’s convenient to you, unlike a phone call. Take a look at your website. Does it allow for online interaction? Would your customers need to resort to the Yellow Pages?
• 42 percent use comparison shopping sites – so it’s worth ensuring that you are included in these increasingly-used online directories. Not sure how? Give us a ring; we can help.
• 58 percent of respondents report using an online coupon when shopping for products or services in their local area in the past year – Now there’s something to think about. Typically, online shoppers are looking for a bargain – and your overheads are less than when advertising in print or broadcast media, so why not share some of those savings with your customers?
• 19 percent of respondents report making an appointment online in the past six months (e.g., business appointment, health-care appointment, auto service or personal service such as a beauty shop) – again, worth thinking about. If you don’t have this functionality on your website, the chances are your customers would welcome it – and it’s also something we can build for you, so drop us an email!

We’ve been pushing the benefits of social media marketing for small businesses for some time now – a flip through our recent blog posts will show that. Most mainstream media is pretty much in accord with us, but I guess that with every new fad there will be some naysayers. Up until now, those have been limited, in my experience, to the older generation of my family, or the odd ranting conversation at a party, but now the Huffington Post – a pretty mainstream internet news source – has published a piece questioning whether Twitter is just too much trouble for the small business.

I understand writer Nelson Davis’ point – that for the very small company, there just isn’t enough time in the day to keep up with the interaction that can take off on Twitter. He also quotes some doomy figures about the downturn of usage on the site. But for every negative he quotes, I could name a small local business that is getting palpable benefits from their tweets. There is also a small part of me who wonders whether this sort of piece is too easy to write: swim against the tide, and you’ll always get plenty of interest.

This month, Google.com announced a new feature in the ‘Shopping’ section of its search: in stock nearby. Currently available only in the US (though sure to follow in other countries if it proves popular), the tweak will allow search results to display whether the searched-for item is available in a shop near you. It will also note if stock is low (providing that information is also on the store’s website, of course).

A lot of smart people work at Google, and this is just one more sign of the emerging importance of shopping local on the global web.

The beginning of this month saw Yahoo’s 15th birthday. While for many businesses 15 is not an advanced age, on the Internet it makes you one of the elders.

Back when Yahoo started, search engines were not a common concept, and, indeed, only a small percentage of the population was going online at all. It’s inspiring to think that this global, million-dollar company was started by two young graduates who happened to see a need. It’s a pattern that we’ve seen over and over again, as the Internet starts enabling Joe Normal to make it big, with nothing more than a rock-solid idea.

Yes, many companies fall by the wayside, but as we begin to understand this manmade phenomenon, the Internet, we also learn more about how to use it to succeed. Let’s take a moment to salute Yahoo, and to hope that our own small businesses might one day match this behemoth of the online world.

Rumour has it that the upcoming Digital Economy Bill will seek to outlaw the provision of an open wireless Internet connection. It’s probably a wise move for private households, but it could have unforeseen effects on small businesses.

An open connection is one which requires no password when joining. Many pubs and cafes, unwilling to provide wifi to passers-by unless they spend a little money, require users to request a password – but of course, unless they have the patience to change the password regularly, word can soon get around.

Under the proposed bill, this situation need not change, but it would no longer be permitted to have a completely free network available. Would this cut down on the number of paying customers, or increase them? The obvious conclusion might be that if you have to ask for a password, you are far more likely to purchase – but one might also argue that humans tend to take the easiest path, and would happily buy from a cafe where they knew they could access the wifi without the need for instruction.

ZDNet also makes the point that businesses will be required to capture and keep details of those who log on, adding unwelcome amounts of administration to what was previously a simple service.

It’s possible, too, that a crackdown could see a reduction in the number of on-the-go searches, as those users without a paid connection (eg, those on iPod Touches) would no longer be able to look up local businesses simply by piggy-backing onto an unsecured connection for a short while, as they stand outside the providing establishment. Whether this would have a large impact is difficult to know – and my feeling is that more and more of us are opting into paid data packages on Smartphones, making the lack of free connections less of an inconvenience, but more of a cost.