How to Create a Successful One-Page Mini-Site for Your Small Business
Mini-sites, or websites consisting of a single landing page, are very popular among small business owners.
This is probably because they're much easier and cheaper to launch than a full-blown website and can relay important information to potential customers in a timely fashion.
But the process of creating a successful mini-site is one that is not often carried out to its full potential.
There are a number of important elements that small business owners often overlook and forgetting to utilize even one of them can drastically decrease the effectiveness of your one-page website.
Speaking of effectiveness, one of the most common mistakes made by small business owners launching their first mini-site is excluding visitor tracking software.
Services like Google Analytics are completely free of charge and can be installed on an existing website within seconds.
Once the provided code has been placed on your mini-site, Google Analytics is able to track all sorts of information about the visitors coming to your site and their browsing habits.
Placing visitor tracking software on your site is a super-easy way to gauge the amount of traffic coming to your site and whether or not visitors are using the site as you had intended.
This data can be used to refine and optimize your one-page small business website.
While larger websites frequently offer multiple methods for contacting a small business, those who create smaller mini-sites often overlook this crucial element.
Directing customers to your site and then offering them no way to contact you is like advertising an in-store sale and locking the doors before everyone arrives.
Small business owners maintaining mini-sites should always provide links to their various social media profiles as a convenient means for communication.
Likewise, it's a good idea to provide a link back to your website from your social networking pages for customers previously unaware of your website.
While social networks are a great way to communicate with customers and notify them of exclusive promotions, offering an email newsletter subscription is just as important.
Believe it or not, many customers still prefer to interact with businesses over email and a digital newsletter offers business owners greater control over the content sent out to potential and existing customers.
Sign up for a service like Aweber or a free alternative like MailChimp and be sure to include a link to your email newsletter sign up form in a prominent location on your one-page mini-site.
Whether you're simply maintaining a mini-site until a larger website is developed or prefer the brevity that a single page offers, these essential mini-site elements must not be forgotten during the design and development process.
If you're outsourcing your web development tasks to a small business, the agency or individual responsible for your website should be able to implement the aforementioned items in a short period of time, especially if you've already gone through the work of setting up your social networking profiles, email newsletter and Analytics account.
And for those using software like Dreamweaver or WordPress to manage their own website, social networks like Facebook and Twitter offer short snippets of code that will generate a professional-looking link to your profile that can be easily dropped in to your existing mini-site in seconds.
This is probably because they're much easier and cheaper to launch than a full-blown website and can relay important information to potential customers in a timely fashion.
But the process of creating a successful mini-site is one that is not often carried out to its full potential.
There are a number of important elements that small business owners often overlook and forgetting to utilize even one of them can drastically decrease the effectiveness of your one-page website.
Speaking of effectiveness, one of the most common mistakes made by small business owners launching their first mini-site is excluding visitor tracking software.
Services like Google Analytics are completely free of charge and can be installed on an existing website within seconds.
Once the provided code has been placed on your mini-site, Google Analytics is able to track all sorts of information about the visitors coming to your site and their browsing habits.
Placing visitor tracking software on your site is a super-easy way to gauge the amount of traffic coming to your site and whether or not visitors are using the site as you had intended.
This data can be used to refine and optimize your one-page small business website.
While larger websites frequently offer multiple methods for contacting a small business, those who create smaller mini-sites often overlook this crucial element.
Directing customers to your site and then offering them no way to contact you is like advertising an in-store sale and locking the doors before everyone arrives.
Small business owners maintaining mini-sites should always provide links to their various social media profiles as a convenient means for communication.
Likewise, it's a good idea to provide a link back to your website from your social networking pages for customers previously unaware of your website.
While social networks are a great way to communicate with customers and notify them of exclusive promotions, offering an email newsletter subscription is just as important.
Believe it or not, many customers still prefer to interact with businesses over email and a digital newsletter offers business owners greater control over the content sent out to potential and existing customers.
Sign up for a service like Aweber or a free alternative like MailChimp and be sure to include a link to your email newsletter sign up form in a prominent location on your one-page mini-site.
Whether you're simply maintaining a mini-site until a larger website is developed or prefer the brevity that a single page offers, these essential mini-site elements must not be forgotten during the design and development process.
If you're outsourcing your web development tasks to a small business, the agency or individual responsible for your website should be able to implement the aforementioned items in a short period of time, especially if you've already gone through the work of setting up your social networking profiles, email newsletter and Analytics account.
And for those using software like Dreamweaver or WordPress to manage their own website, social networks like Facebook and Twitter offer short snippets of code that will generate a professional-looking link to your profile that can be easily dropped in to your existing mini-site in seconds.
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