We have seen examples where small businesses have successfully beaten the big brand in online just because of their websites. Big businesses could have their digital marketing budget in millions of Dirhams however a small business’s entire operation might not exceed to that. But, with an intelligent strategy and a great online brand image the small business can compete with big businesses and enterprises easily. So, it is vital for small businessesto have a cost-effective and appealing website for their online targeted audience. Here are certain methods and certain features which will keep the cost of your small business website low at the same time the website will also be able to perform well against your competitors:

Choose Inexpensive but a Good Domain Name

The domain name is the website address, for Google we type www.google.com or www.google.ae this is the web address or domain name for the Google search engine website. Similarly your domain name will be your web address. It has to be very simple and easy to remember. In Dubai and all around the UAE if you want to register a domain name ending with ‘.ae’ that can be done from Etisalat online domain name registration portal https://www.nic.ae/. However if you want a domain name that ends with ‘.com’ then it can be done from any domain name registration company. However the important thing here is that if you want to keep your domain name cost-effective you should choose a slighter bigger name. The domain names with two or three or even four letters are very expensive ones. Usually you won’t be able to find such a short domain name, however if in case you find it, check the cost and compare it with the longer domain names as well.

For the domain name the length is important, it shouldn’t be too short or too long. Use such words which are easy to spell and remember. Don’t use special characters, digits, hyphens, etc. such domain names are hard to remember. Think about the future also. The domain name should be support your future growth. For example the www.amazon.com was first established for selling books only, and now they sell everything. However if Mr. Jeff Bezos have chosen a domain name such as onlinebookstore.com or buybooksonline.com, etc then how they would be able to sell all these items? They would have to change it. Which is usually a very difficult and risky task. So, it is always better to choose a generic domain name rather industry or product specific names. The generic and medium size domain name are most cost-effective as well as easy to remember and can support scalability too.

Choose Shared Hosting and Basic SSL Certificate Plans

The hosting is similar to a computer it provide space to put your website and its files. The website consists of source code which executes and renders the web design in the browser and the files which are pictures, videos and any document you put on your website. These source code and files need to store in a storage and that storage is called the hosting. It also includes all other required computer resources such as processor, RAM, network, etc. The only difference is that the hosting is an online storage and anyone can access those files form the web browser using your domain name. The SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and it is a digital certificate that authenticate and identify a website and it also enables an encrypted connection between the user (browser) and the server (hosting). These days it is highly recommended to use an SSL certificate as people in Dubai and all around the UAE are well aware of the fact that websites with SSL are more secure than the ones without SSL. The SSL highlights in the web browser as a green padlock.

Sometimes websites that doesn’t have SSL can be marked by the web browsers. The web browsers prompt a warning and tell users that this website could be harmful as it doesn’t have SSL. Which leaves a very bad impression on users. So, it is better to have an SSL Certificate too, the Basic SSL Certificate or the entry-level plan is enough. For the small businesses and startups the ‘shared hosting plan’ is enough to host a mediocre size website. Some hosting service providers also provide the Hosting and SSL in a single package, which is very cost-effective. The shared hosting itself is the entry level hosting plan and is the cheapest one. It provides basic hosting space starting from 500MBs to 1GB or even more. And it also provide a few email addresses as well. It is always good to use your company email address for business communication rather using Gmail or YahooMail, etc. It is always better to use some email client software such as MS Outlook for your business email addresses. It will download all the emails from the server to your laptop or computer thus not much space will be needed on the hosting server else you will have to keep facing issues with your emails due to filled server storage space and you will have to pay extra to expand it.

Choose an Open-Source Free CMS

The CMS stands for Content Management System. There are two types of websites, one is static and one is called dynamic. The static website is a raw files of source code that are being executed at the server/hosting to render a design at users’ screens. In order to update a static website the webmaster or business must have technical personals who knows website programming and can do the amendments or updates on the website. Whereas the dynamic website means that it has a CMS integrated, CMS or content management system is a software tool that allows the webmasters to update and modify the website content and in some cases the layout too without requiring any prior technical knowledge or qualification. A person with adequate computer proficiency can easily manage a website using a CMS. There is a huge variety of CMS available in the market. Some of them are paid some are free some are open source some aren’t.

The CMS should be widely used, means very popular, it should be open-source, and of course it should be free to save cost. WordPress is the world’s most famous open source content management system (CMS) and it is also absolutely free. The WordPress CMS supports thousands of web design templates and plugins. The plugins are small programs or software patches used to enable certain functionalities in the WordPress websites. There are other free CMS too, but if you are going for a free and open-source CMS the WordPress is the best choice. The open-source here means that this platform is free for everyone and everyone can develop applications, tools and programs on this platform, most importantly the WordPress and other open-source platforms doesn’t prohibit customization of the platform. You must be thinking what does it has to do with a small business website, well actually when a platform is free and open-source then the entire internet community can offer support for it. There would be tons of free online forums and websites offering support for an open-source platform.

Get a Web Design Theme or Template

As the CMS are free there are tons of free themes too, but for a small business the online image is very crucial. Various market researches and studies have shown that it requires only a fraction of a second to build an image or impression of a website in the subconscious mind of the user. The content and rest came later. So, your first impression is very crucial to build trust and reputation, which will be driven by the web design. A free web design temple will not suffice. You must either have to purchase a web design template or acquire a web designing firm (such as RSI Concepts, leading web design agency in Dubai, UAE) to build that web design theme or template for your website. Obviously purchasing a web design theme or temple online is cheaper than acquiring a professional web design company to design it for you. But there is a downside, if you are purchasing a template from online, either its support will be limited or there will be no support at all. Even if the technical support is there you must have to upgrade your design to make sure you get that support, which will cost you every time you will upgrade. This is a bit complex too.

If you purchase an online theme or template it will not be as per your requirements, you will eventually have to hire a professional to customize it to meet your requirements. However, acquiring a professional web designing company in Dubai or anywhere in UAE will cost you a little extra but the web design will be satisfactory. You can get a web design as per your needs and requirement, in addition to that the web design agency’s experience and professional skills will also refine the template even further to be able to perform well. There are some other perks too of hiring a professional service. For example, these days the smartphone usage have already surpassed the traditional computers and laptops. It is very crucial to have an excellent mobile compatible web design which should be able to maintain the user experience at mobile devices too. For that responsive web designs and templates are used. A professional web design agency can easily provide you a responsive web design along with support for search engine optimization which is also very beneficial for small businesses as the SEO friendly designs can bring free organic traffic from search engines and also add to the brand image and brand reputation. So it is always better to acquire a professional web design agency to do build the web design for you.

Prepare the Content

After the web design it will be your content which will dictate the customer experience. So having a great content which clearly define your all products and services is a great competitive advantage. The content should be very accurate and provide enough information to convince an online prospect to convert. The taglines, slogans, heading, highlights and descriptions should be prepared with great care. As in case of a website you or any of your employee will not be present to explain anything to your prospects or customers, so it will be the content alone which will do this work. Make sure your content do this job very well. Apart from the content the user experience and customer journey are also very important, these things are basically a combination of both the web design and the content. These days’ people generally tend to read less and view more. So, it is important that you have visual and graphics content as well, such as images, animations, videos etc. Whatever you can easily manage should be added. But do not overdo it. Too much content is very confusing and it distracts the visitors.

In any business website there is one homepage and several internal pages. The homepage is the online doorway to your business. Make sure you have a bit of everything presented clearly at the homepage. As for the internal pages, the ‘About’ page or Company details are important and help building trust and confidence of the users on the business. Don’t create too many pages, as too many pages will cost you more. Only include essential pages with sufficient content. It is better to prepare separate pages for your products and services it will not only help you improving the customer journey but it will also provide you an SEO advantage, more pages can bring more website traffic. Creating only essential pages with only limited and important content will save you a lot of cost. Another important thing that you should consider, most of the businesses in Dubai and all around the UAE have bilingual websites with English and Arabic, some even have more languages. It is better to stick with one language, as it is very cost-effective, but in case if you think that your audience will also need a secondary language then add both English and Arabic. Do not use any online translation tool or embedded translation plugins as they are don’t do proper translation and the website layout also looks bad if translated by such techniques. Better to have both language versions prepared by your web design agency.

Read More: 5 Strategies to Build Online Brand Identity in 2021

For e-Commerce Businesses

If you are a small or local business and building an e-commerce platform to expand your areas of operations or if you are moving to the online to have an e-commerce website, all of the above steps will remain the same. Only the web design theme or template will be different form an ordinary business website. Let us take the example of WordPress as I have mentioned above. The WordPress CMS also support e-commerce and marketplace features. There are several option that a small business can chose, the best is always to acquire a professional e-commerce web design agency who can help you creating a platform which not only minimize your initial cost but also ensures that your operational cost will remain under control. For e-commerce websites the initial cost is one issue, but if the platform is not built properly then they might end up doing a lot of manual work which require more employee which results in more expenses.

If an e-commerce website is built and designed by a professional e-commerce and marketplace provider company such as RSI Concepts, the initial cost will be less and the operational cost will be low too. Most of the regular operations such as the order handling, shipments, inventory, etc can be controlled and managed through the CMS itself. Businesses will not going to need additional resource as most of these processes will be controlled and managed through the CMS. That is how a cost-effective e-commerce or online marketplace can be developed to aid the small businesses to keep the running cost low. It will maximize the operational capabilities, reduce the need of additional resources and increase their overall profitability and will be very supportive for their gradual growth.

Read More: Why businesses need Mobile Apps?

A One-Stop-Shop is Always Cost Effective

As we have discussed briefly that whatever the method a small business wants to choose eventually they will have to acquire service providers. Either it is for domain name registration, website hosting and SSL, theme or web design customization, the content, or anything else, a small business somehow will end up dealing with a service provider. It could be multiple service providers for different services or a single service provider for all of such services. It is always better to hire a single web design agency in Dubai or anywhere else in UAE who offers all these services. The web design and development agencies and service providers also know that fact very well. Almost all web designing companies in Dubai and all around the UAE are offering a complete package which includes each and everything you need.

It is always better to take quotes from multiple such service providers, compare them and compare the companies too, check their samples of work, testimonials, online ratings, etc. and then chose a single service provider who can offer you all those services from domain name registration to content preparation and everything in between. Make sure the service provider is also capable of handling your future demands, such as upgrades, e-commerce, SEO, social media and digital marketing, etc. A single service provider will save you a lot of cost and hustle.

Read More: What is the difference between hosting, cloud and data centers

Conclusion

Small businesses often have limited budget and resources. Usually here in Dubai and all around the UAE small and medium size businesses (SMBs) rarely have any internal IT department or person. It is always very cost-efficient for small businesses to out-source their IT needs. A website have become an integral part of the online strategy. Since past few years businesses in Dubai and all across the UAE are also focusing more on online presence and brand image. The small business owners and managers are always seeking ways to have a cost-effective website. In this blog we have covered all the essential parts of a website and how to do them in the most cost-efficient way and also maintaining the performance and quality. For a small business the ideal situation is to hire a web design and development agency who can take care of all the requirements, a single service provider will be more cost-effective and easy to manage too. A websites project starts with a domain name, which should be simple, easy to remember and medium sized to minimize the cost. Then comes the website hosting and SSL, for a small business shared hosting is enough and the basic SSL plan will suffice.

The actual website designing and development is where the most resources are consumed. Having a free and open-source content management system (CMS) can save a lot of cost. Businesses can also purchase a web design theme or template from online, but a customer build web design is always better and it also performs well. For a small business website only essential internal pages are enough, no need of creating irrelevant and unimportant pages. Limited number of pages will save cost for the content. Have a single language design unless necessary to have a bilingual website. Hire a professional web designing service to prepare your web design which can support required languages and also have support for mobile devices. For the e-commerce websites, it is important that the CMS and platform provide enough support to help integrating the required systems such as inventory management system, order management system, customer support module, shipment and other relevant integration. This is how a small business can minimize the initial cost as well as the operational cost of their website. RSI Concepts is a leading web design agency in Dubai, UAE, if you need a website or want to revamp your existing website, feel free to contact us through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

Check out this blog: How to Utilize Expo 2020 for Your Business Growth

The post How to Get a Cost-Effective Website for a Small Business appeared first on Web Design Dubai Blog Service.

First of All, Set Your Goals and Make a Plan

It is important that you have a clear goals and objectives of your web design project. Think critically, what do you want to achieve from your website, is it brand awareness, or are planning to offer any online services such as online purchase, or are planning to have a website to compete your competitors, or you simply want to target more people and have plans to expand your operations. Whatever you want to achieve from your website it has to be very clear in your mind before starting a website. Once you have set a clear goal of creating a new website or revamping your existing website the next thing that you should have is a clear plan. Not a project plan for website development, but a plan which will or could help you in achieving your goals.

For example, I want to revamp my website to include smartphone compatibility or responsiveness, or let say I am currently operating in Dubai and want to reach out to the audience in Sharjah as well. Similarly set your goals and then make a plan, in our example the plan would be to hire web designing company and let them create a website which you can market either by paid advertisements or simply by focusing on your SEO. This is how you should have a goal set and then a plan which will help you in achieving your goals and objectives.

Select a Good Content Management System (CMS)

The content management system or CMS is software tool that help webmasters to create and manage the digital content on the website. These days, especially in Dubai and all around the UAE the websites have become a very dynamic communication medium. Earlier there were times when a business might not need to update the website for many years, now a days, the market trends have been changed and the websites have become very important strategic tool for marketing and branding. It is extremely important for a small local business to be able to update their website regularly. However, small businesses often don’t have enough resources to hire a programmer or services of a web design agency which do the website updates for them, so it is crucial that you choose a very easy-to-use content management system (CMS).

There are multiple things that you might require to update on regular bases, for example if you are promoting certain products or services you can put them on the website, if you are running some promotional offers, or any such thing, it can be advertised on the website. The images can be changed, the textual and multimedia content could require an update. You might have news and announcement sections, where you want to put more news. A small local business’s website should be able to utilize the full potential of the SEO or search engine optimization. Mostly business post blogs and content that interests their audience. All such things can be easily done only when you are using a good content management system. There are so many different types of content management system such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Wix and many more. The WordPress is the world’s most used platform and it is also very good for small local business, however it doesn’t matter what CMS you chose the only thing that matters is that the small local business’s website should have a great CMS.

Create an Engaging Web Design

Web design is the extremely important aspect of a website, it is the very first impression of the visitors and its look and feel can hugely impact a brands image and identity. For a small local business having a captivating web design is absolutely necessary. A web design alone is not enough the content and the user experience are also very important. If you have any online purchase facility or are planning to have one in future then pay more attentions to your users’ experience and user interface. The web design itself is just the visual look and feel of a website, it includes design elements, menu, styles, color schemes, color pallets, backgrounds, and such things. However the content is the text, pictures and photos, videos or any kind of media you are posting on your website. It is extremely important that both content and the design synchronize deeply to present you message or goal. The user must not have to search or surf your website to understand about your business, in fact the first landing screen should be able to express your brand and business clearly.

Here some must have features or qualities of a good web design:

Homepage Design

The homepage is the most viewed page on any website. For small local business this page is also equally important. Whenever a user reached to your website’s homepage it take them only a fraction of a second to build an impression of that business in their subconscious mind. Then the user starts to absorb the information form the web page. The very first thing any user notice is the area that is under the menu and logo, which is mostly a slider or an image or a video. In some cases it could be search tool or such thing. However, it doesn’t matter what type of content you have in this area, the important thing is that this area got the most attentions. If a visitor will like it only then they will scroll further or explore the site, else they will close it. So make sure you are putting all the important things in that section. Then the rest of the homepage should have all the information of all your products and services, in case you are an eCommerce business then put all the categories, or at least most important categories. Do not make homepage too long and too complex, make it simple and short, and try to maintain a flow of information. This is how a homepage for a small local business should be designed.

Internal Pages

All of the internal pages usually follow the same theme as that of the homepage except few landing pages which are purpose build for marketing campaigns or any other purpose. Even for the eCommerce the product pages follow the same web design theme except the body of the page which contains the information about the product and it also includes the online purchase process. Make sure you have a detailed About US page which should have information about the business and its mission statements and vision or such information. These information are very helpful for building trust and brand reputation. The Contact Us page is must, add privacy policy, terms of use and return policies as well. Then as per your business’s niche add more pages. Make sure all internal pages are following the same look and feel of the web design theme which was established for the Homepage.

Scrolling, Micro Interaction and User Interface

These days in Dubai and all across the UAE business are rapidly adopting unconventional methods of scrolling, some are using parallax, some are using horizontal scrolling, some are using graphics and animations, some are utilizing various loading techniques to load more content upon scrolling. All those methods are great but it is important to understand how these methods will help the user to reach to the content. The micro interactions are also a great way to engage your website visitors. The micro interactions are the micro animation and responses of the user interface which trigger by mouse or any other input. That is a great way to design captivating web pages, as whenever a user move their mouse or hoover they could see a visible change in the design, which increase curiosity and the user keep scrolling through the web pages. There are so many other techniques used to make a user interface more interactive and attractive for the website visitors.

Well-planned Navigational Structure

The information architecture and well-planned navigational structure plays a vital role in any website’s success. Mostly the visitors reached to a website is because either they are searching for some information, it could be a product or service, or it could be anything but the important thing is that a user is coming here to find the information they are seeking for. So it is crucial that all the information are not scattered all over the website but should be well-organized and well-managed information structure and navigation. Sometime business try to link all their internal pages in the menus which is also not right, in fact the menu should be a doorway to various categories. It should provide links for all the internal pages. Make sure all the information are in a right flow, for example, let us take a case of salon, in that case if a page is providing information about hair cutting service, it should also provide information or link for the information related to all services which are relevant to the hair cutting and styling, if you think you have too many pages, then at least link the important pages/services or popular services and products. Do not merge irrelevant information and pages, this will distract your users.

Content of the Website

The website content is considered to be the backbone of the website. The web design is nothing without the content and the content is nothing without the web design. Both are equally important and when the web design is prepared in a way that if focuses better on important content the user experience is improved which also improves online conversions and help building a better brand identity. Here in Dubai and in other emirate of UAE everyone has access to the high speed internet, which gives rise to the multimedia content. The multimedia content is important too, but make sure you have proper headings, headlines and taglines which can influence the user’s decision of making a purchase. It is also important to have textual description. For the text use normal and plain language. Here in UAE as almost all emirates including Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi have expats from all over the world, however the national language is Arabic, so it is also very helpful to have multi-lingual websites. The multi-lingual websites add value to user experience and improve online sales and conversions.

Responsive Web Design and Cross Platform Compatibility

In Dubai and all across the UAE everyone have smartphones and access to the high speed internet. People tend to spend hours on their smartphones on daily bases. In fact studies shows that people do more internet searches from their smartphones than on the traditional computers or laptops. Which is why responsiveness or smartphone compatibility is a must have feature these days. Another important thing which most businesses and web designers over looked is the cross platform compatibility. The cross platform compatibility is that the website and web design provides identical user experience on all supported devices and platforms. The devices are different screen sizes which are either laptops or desktop PCs and smartphones, a responsive website have ability to detect the screen size and then render the design elements as per the screen size.

However the cross browser platform compatibility is the compatibility with different operating systems (Windows, MAC, Linux, Android OS, iOS, etc.) and different web browsers. As the Windows users prefer to use Google Chrome, MS Edge, Firefox, the MAC users usually use Safari, the Android users use Google Chrome or Opera and the Apple Mobile Devices (iPhone and iPad) users use Safari more. The web design is a combination of different source codes and programming languages, each reacts different of different operating system and also in different web browsers. In fact different web browsers behave differently on different operating systems as well. This is why the cross platform compatibility is also very important along with the responsiveness or smartphone and tablets compatibility.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

For a small local business the search engine optimization or SEO is extremely important. As all small business have limited budget for their marketing, so it is important to get organic traffic to your website. The organic traffic is the traffic coming from search engines such as Google and MSN search engine. When the web designers are designing and programming websites, they sometime use such programing languages which stop the search engines to read the content of the website. For example if all the text is loaded through scripts or is in a video which are not readable for the search engines. If a search engine will fail to read the content of the website, they can’t understand the subject of the website or the content and they will not rank it in their search engine result pages (SERPS). It is important to make sure all of your website content is readable for the search engines.

Furthermore there are certain codes and scripts used to make web pages more visible for the search engine and to help search engine in understanding the subject of the web pages. For example, the Meta Data which includes the web page’s title and web page’s short description which is only meant for the search engine and are not visible inside the webpage. Some browsers may use that title as the tab/window title as well. There are so many other things such as language identifiers, location markers, rich snippets, schema and structured data, which is also very helpful for the search engines. These things will help small local businesses to rank higher in local searches and they can get more free organic traffic from the search engines which will also increase the chances of getting more online conversions.

Conclusion

As small local businesses have limited budgets and they are always hesitant in investing their marketing, especially online or digital marketing. However a good website can do wonders for small and local businesses. The very first thing is to set up a goal and target for your website project either it is a completely new website or a revamp. The next step is to make a plan and estimate your budget limit for that. The very first step for designing a local business website is to choose an appropriate content management system (CMS). As a small or local business might not afford to hire a dedicated webmaster or services of a web designing firm. So, it is important that the small business owner or the management would be able to update their website without any dependency. The next step is to design the website. The homepage, internal pages, navigational structure, content, and responsiveness and cross platform compatibility are very important.

These are some features that very important for a successful small local business website. The search engine optimization (SEO) can be very helpful for the small businesses as it could bring free website traffic which help business to improve online conversions and leads. If you are a small local business owner and planning to design a brand new website or a revamp for you existing website, do feel free to let us know. RSI Concepts is a leading web design Dubai company, we have hundreds of satisfied customers who achieved their goals with our web designs. You can reach us out through our Contact Us page or leave a comment in the comment box below and we will get in touch with you soon.

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