For a small business, a website isn't just a digital listing. It's a marketing tool, a storefront, and an information kiosk all rolled into one. And a great website (usually created by using the best website builder coupled with the best web hosting service) draws more eyeballs than any flyer, or ad in the penny saver or acrobat balancing company pens outside the chamber of commerce ever could.
Apple, the local guitar teacher, the fruit cart next to the bus stop: they all have websites. It's nearly impossible for a business to exist, let alone thrive without one.
If your small business needs a new website, or doesn't have one at all, here are 10 things you need to know to get it properly built and working hard for you, and separately check out our list of the best small business website builder providers and our list of the best small business web host out there.
1. Have a purpose
Like any tool, your website has a purpose. Before beginning any construction, make sure you know what it is.
Is it a platform for selling your craft aprons? Is it a microphone to broadcast your status as a thought leader? Is it a way for customers to view your credentials?
And how will your website serve your customers, both current and potential? What competing sites do they visit and what are the keywords they use to find them?
Get specific; quantify your needs. A focused, purpose built website will capture more customers than a mish-mashed aggregate of personal information.
2. Keep your friends away from your website
Don't hire cousin Jodie or your best friend's art school roommate to build your website. Cheap hires make cheap-looking websites, regardless of their intentions. Your website will be (at the very least) the face of your business. It's the last place you should cut corners.
Either build the website yourself using the best website builder and the best web hosting tool available, which are very affordable, or hire a vetted professional web developer.
A freelancer will likely run you around $1000. A full-fledged agency a few thousand. A website can be pricey but it will be worth the investment.
3. Use a website builder
Of the platforms available, website builders will be the easiest to use. Popular website builders like Wix , Squarespace and Weebly utilize pre-set templates and themes to simplify the creation process. If you can drag and drop, you can use a website builder.
There are some cheap website builder providers too. Most require a subscription that ranges from $8 to $20 a month, which includes hosting fees.
The downside of templates is their limited flexibility. Most services do offer a broad selection of templates – including ones that are industry specific (retail, hospitality, etc.) – but you can rarely stray from the menu.
4. Use a CMS if you need customization
If you're in need of a large, complicated, multi-page site utilize a Content Management System instead of a website builder. Though there is a learning curve with a CMS , it can provide the same flexibility and custom functionality you'd find in a scratch-built site – without any hardcore coding.
If you want to hire a web developer down the line, consider using an open source CMS like WordPress or Joomla! Most developers are familiar with these two platforms, and can easily manipulate a site made in them. A proprietary CMS, however, will require them to learn new code, potentially slowing their progress.
Open source also will give you access to thousands of community created plugins and themes to add to your website (test them first to make sure they work). Just keep in mind that while WordPress and Joomla! are free to use, their plugins can cost anywhere from $20 to $200.
Unlike their Wix and Squarespace built counterparts, websites crafted with a CMS will need a third party for hosting and email aliases. Luckily there are plenty of options, like GoDaddy and Google Enterprise Apps, for such services.
5. It takes time
Building a website will be relatively easy, but it won't be fast. Whether you DIY or hire a developer, a good website will take longer than you think.
That's because the bottleneck isn't in construction, it's in content generation. It will take time to put even simple content like a headshot or "Welcome" blog post together. And it should. There are no shortcuts to good content. Plan accordingly.
6. Keep it clean
Busy websites with in your face popups, autoplay music and animated text will get visited for three seconds and then closed. Keep your customers reading with a neat, tightly organized website.
Use headers, short paragraphs and bullet points to highlight important information. And never let the scroll get out of control. Short attention spans hate long sites.
Most importantly, keep visitors clicking with strong calls to action. Study what the competition is offering – and how they are offering it. "Click here for free trial" is weak. You want clicks, not yawns.
7. Content is king
ABC: always be contenting. Search engines love fresh, relevant content and so will your customers. Regular updates are the best way to drive eyeballs to your site.
But if you don't have a plan for regularly updating your "Thoughts & Musings" section, don't have one at all. Old blog posts and expired offers will make your business look like it's out of business.
8. Mobile is a must
Most people now access the Internet through their mobile device. Google knows this, which is why a website's mobile-friendliness affects its search ranking. Don't cut your website off at the knees. Make sure it will load properly on phones and tablets.
If you don't know how to mobile-enable, there are plenty of resources that can help. Platforms like bMobilized or DudaMobile will create a separate mobile site for you. And most CMS platforms have plugins that will "turn on" a mobile theme if your website detects a mobile visitor.
9. SEO or else
Think of the search engine as the bus new customers take to get around the Internet. If your website isn't on the route, new customers will never know your business exists.
If your website plan includes good, continuously updated content and mobile-friendliness, you'll likely have a well-lit, easily-seen search engine bus stop.
You can improve it even further by inputting descriptive keywords into your page URLs (name the page "about us" instead of "page 2", for example) and by link sharing with other websites. (Though you should do this sparingly and only with relevant websites. And forget about a "Links" page. Google will think it's cheating.)
Avoid redundancy too. Pages without distinct identities will compete with each other in search results. And last but not least, include a review section and encourage your customers to use it. Search engines will consider the amount of feedback your business receives when they compile their rankings.
Note that the algorithm governing search will undoubtedly change. Keep yourself in the know with the Google Webmaster Central Blog . As search criteria change, so should your website.
10. Use analytics from day one
Use performance tools like Google Analytics as soon as the website launches so you can immediately see what's working and what isn't. More information will only help you make better decisions.
Data and analytics (D&A) play an essential role in improving the accuracy and effectiveness of business decisions by expanding the information that is available to decision-makers.
The latest Sims 4 expansion reduced me to tears
There’s something to be said for the power of nostalgia. Many of us over a certain age have grown up with an appreciation for early video games that’s likely lost on the younger generation, and I feel that The Sims franchise is especially notable for this if you don’t identify as straight. The latest expansion pack 'Wedding Stories' offers a host of marriage ceremony-specific features, alongside placing a same-sex couple at the front of most of its advertising, and as a queer woman that's grown up playing the franchise from its first base game, I was ecstatic.
If your eyes started rolling at that, this piece probably isn’t for you – the Sims franchise is, of course, beloved outside of the LGBTQIA+ community, but it holds a special place for queer and curious kids who were able to explore their sexuality, and I’m not going to shy away from that.
This isn’t to say that heterosexual people can’t also resonate with how the various editions of The Sims has grown with us as a society though, as I'm sure we can all share a collective outrage over base game features that were present in the original Sims released back in early 2000, slowly becoming paid-for content in DLC packs as the series has evolved (Hot tubs EA? Really?).
It’s not all bad though – The Sims franchise has consistently provided great representation for the gay and bisexual community that was generally lacking elsewhere. While you couldn’t get ‘gay married’ in the original version of The Sims, the simulation game never prevented you from having same-sex couples or allowing them to move in with their partners.
There were very few games that allowed that kind of interaction at the time, mostly being a handful of RPG titles where the sexual identities of NPCs are swept under the rug – for example, the male protagonist in Fable is able to romance and marry an NPC regardless of their gender, but while a union between him and a female character is treated legitimately, marrying a man is comedic and seen as ‘just a couple of blokes being blokes’.
Remember kids, it’s not gay if it's just you and The Boys™ joking around.
Representation matters
Things have thankfully moved on a bit in the last two decades though, with The Sims 2 introducing a ‘Joined Union’ that was identical to a regular heterosexual marriage in everything but the name, and gay marriage being officially introduced in the Sims 3. Before this, you could install mods that would forcibly introduce gay marriage into the game, but that’s not ideal for those who only like to play with approved game content.
There’s also plenty of queer characters within The Sims lore (yes, this franchise has established lore to follow), such as Dela Ostrow and Mia Hayes, two women in a relationship who feature on an updated version of The Sims 4 box, and many of the expansions have at least one same-sex couple pre-made for you to play with.
Still, Wedding stories is the first DLC pack for the Sims that places queer relationships in the spotlight, with a marriage between two women being the focus of most of the marketing material. This wasn’t representation shoved to one side, instead proudly displaying it right in our faces.
The content for the pack itself has very little difference regardless of if heterosexual or same-sex couples are the ones planning and throwing a wedding, but seeing sexual diversity so openly represented by a mainstream game franchise really hit me.
I was a few glasses of wine down, having a chill evening and playing around with the expansion and a few tears were shed. I didn’t feel like EA was queerbaiting its player base at all with the advertising angle it took which was refreshing enough, but it made me smile to think that this is how far the simulation franchise had come. Jump back many years to when I would try and hide my queer characters from my parents on the family computer, it’s so nice to feel like folks like me are actively considered when developing a game rather than as an afterthought.
Great marketing, shame about the gameplay
That said, I headed into playing the most recent Sims 4 expansion Wedding Stories with a handful of concerns. There was already controversy that the game wouldn’t be sold in Russia due to the country's restrictive laws on queer content, which was met with some hefty backlash from long-time fans of the series. That decision was eventually rolled back after EA announced that all versions of the game would be released on February 23, albeit with updated cover artwork that will remove the images of women getting married from the cover art in Russia.
The expansion itself has also had some heat, and honestly, that’s understandable. The game is pretty buggy, not to the point where i’d say it’s unplayable but it certainly made the experience a lot more frustrating than it should have been. Wedding guests ignored dress codes you set and refused to stay seated, and brides kept changing out of their wedding outfits to name just a few issues I experienced.
It was announced on March 3 that a patch was in the works that should fix most of the issues blighting players, but to have put the game on sale in this state in the first place is certainly questionable.
Here are a few of the changes being introduced, courtesy of the official Sims 4 Laundry Lis t:
Sadly, with the actual game being so buggy, it’s hard to recommend it in its current state, so if you have your heart set on picking it up, I'd recommend you give it a month or two for all the issues to be ironed out.
You can see where The Sims has really, really tried to meet the representation standards expected of its fans, with some non-western outfits and wedding traditions included alongside the typical white dresses and exchanging of vows, but given I’m whiter than mayonnaise, I can’t really speak with any authority if they’re accurate or well-received.
I am happy about its allyship though, and that feels more important than ever with the backlash that queer folk face when they’re granted representation in popular media. Sure, I had to be drunk to actually enjoy the gameplay, but I’m so incredibly happy with how far we’ve come to walk a same-sex couple down the aisle without needing to fish around online for mods.
Google Pixel 6a: here's everything we know so far
We're now very close to Google IO 2022 , as that kicks off on May 11 and there's a chance that the Google Pixel 6a will show up there, though we're by no means certain. It should be worth tuning in to anyway though, so check out how to watch Google IO 2022 if you're interested.
Google makes A-series phones for all its main-series ones, though their release timing has been sporadic in the past. For example, the Pixel 5a was a more affordable version of the Pixel 5 - though it launched quite a while after and only in certain regions.
While we don’t know anything for sure about the Google Pixel 6a yet - other perhaps than the name, which Google itself has mentioned in a coloring book - the design and some of the specs and features have started to leak, so we’re beginning to get a good idea about it.
Below you’ll find everything we’ve heard so far, along with information on the possible release date and price, and we’ll update this article as soon as we hear anything new about Google’s next handset.
Google Pixel 6a: cut to the chase
Google Pixel 6a release date and price
The Google Pixel 6a's arrival might be imminent, as there's evidence that it could arrive at Google IO 2022, which starts on May 11 (tomorrow at the time of writing).
If so, we'll probably see it during the keynote, which starts at 1pm ET / 10am PT / 6pm BST, or 3am AEST on May 12 for those in Australia. We've got a guide covering how to watch the Google IO live stream .
Why do we think we might see it there? Well, the first big Pixel 6a release date rumor suggested the phone will be coming in May 2022. Max Jambor, a leaker who has a good track record for smartphone information, has said the release is scheduled for May.
The Google Pixel 5a was unveiled in August 2021, and the Pixel 4a was similarly launched in August 2020. That means Google will be pulling forward its launch to earlier in the year, and it's likely to avoid the upcoming Google Pixel 7 that we expect at the tail-end of 2022.
Plus, the Pixel 5a was only sold in the US and Japan, so Google might want to soon make a more widely available mid-range model.
This would of course line up with Google IO 2022, and Google's CEO has teased new products at the keynote conference. The company did announce the Pixel 3a at Google IO years ago, so the timing wouldn't be crazy.
We've also now heard that the Pixel 6a has been spotted on a US carrier's inventory list, which further suggests it's coming soon, as does a leaked image of a retail box , and the news that the phone has gone into production .
On the other hand, other sources are saying the global chip shortage could push the phone's launch back to late July - possibly July 28 . It seems as though the Google Pixel 6a release date is still up in the air.
There’s no news on what the phone might cost, but the Google Pixel 5a retailed for $449 (around £325 / AU$610), and the Pixel 4a 5G was $499 / £499 / AU$799, so somewhere in that region seems likely.
Design and display
We have a good idea of what the Google Pixel 6a might look like, as unofficial renders have been shared by OnLeaks (a leaker with a good track record) and 91Mobiles. You can see some of these below, and if you’ve seen the Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro then the design here will look very familiar.
The design shown includes a large camera block running horizontally across the back of the phone, housing a dual-lens camera. There’s also a three-tone color scheme, a punch-hole camera on the front, and a flat screen.
You can also see power and volume buttons on the right edge, and a USB-C port along with speaker and microphone grilles on the bottom edge. There’s no sign of a headphone port.
According to the source, the Google Pixel 6a has a glass back and comes in at 152.2 x 71.8 x 8.7mm (or 10.4mm including the rear camera bump). That would make it slightly smaller than the Pixel 6, which makes sense as this phone also apparently has a smaller 6.2-inch OLED screen.
Exactly the same design can be seen in the photos below, which show what’s purportedly an aluminum dummy unit of the Pixel 6a. Dummy units are sometimes used by accessory makers and the like to help design products prior to a phone’s launch, though it’s not clear exactly where this one came from.
You can also see the same design on a leaked retail box , visible below. Though we'd take this with a pinch of salt, as it comes from a questionable source and lacks the two-tone color scheme of earlier leaks.
Elsewhere, a listing on a US carrier's inventory system apparently mentioned black, white, and green shades, so those might be the colors you can get the Pixel 6a in.
Camera and battery
While the Google Pixel 6a will probably inherit the design of the rest of the Pixel 6 range, it might not inherit their cameras, as code found in the Google Camera app suggests that this phone will have the same 12.2MP main camera as the Pixel 5a – and most other Pixels prior to the Pixel 6.
That would be in place of the 50MP one found on the latest models. However, the same code suggests that it will at least get the same 12MP ultra-wide snapper as the Pixel 6, and the same 8MP front-facing camera, so it might only be the main sensor that differs.
One big specs leak, which we'll dive into further in the next section, provides us with some battery details. It says we'll see a 4,800mAh cell inside the Pixel 6a alongside 30W fast-charging.
For reference, the Pixel 6 has a 4,614mAh battery, so the Pixel 6a could end up giving stronger battery performance than its more expensive sibling.
Specs and features
The Google Pixel 6a could live up to the Pixel 6 name, as not only might it have the same basic design as the rest of the range, but also the same chipset , as code found in the Google Camera app suggests as much.
That means it might have a Tensor chipset, designed to power advanced features like Live Translation.
We've since heard that from another source , and even seen the phone benchmarked with that chipset, along with 6GB of RAM.
Elsewhere, we’ve heard that the Pixel 6a might have an in-screen fingerprint scanner, 128GB of storage, and 6GB or 8GB of RAM – along with running Android 12 out of the box. We’d expect it would also support 5G, since that’s a fairly standard feature now.