Your website is the most basic, most in-depth online representation of you and your business. Besides providing them with useful information (see next section), you want to convert the viewer to a customer.

So make it easy and obvious what they should do next: call you, fill out a form, download a document, or buy your product.

Sometimes the viewer is interested in your products, services, or information, but is not yet ready to take action. You can still encourage continued engagement with them by suggesting that they 

• sign up for your free email newsletter, 
• follow you on Twitter, 
• "like" your FaceBook page, 
• subscribe to your YouTube channel, 
• find you on Pinterest, etc.

You can read more about website content at "Working Websites."

What should be on my website?

You can have more, but some basic information you should have on your website is:

• Contact information

• Your list of services
• Pricing information
• Your address
• Driving directions
• Testimonials
• Call to action
• Social media links
• Newsletter sign-up
• Blog link
• Free stuff

And, keep it up to date when any changes happen.

(Read "The Most Valuable Information on a Website.")

There seems to be a lot of free stuff to build a website. What do you recommend if I want to do it myself?

I'm not going to make any specific recommendations about which web design and development packages to use because there are just too many to name.

I would first consider this:

• Do you have time?
• Do you have the skills?
• Do you have someone in your employ with the skills?
• Can you afford to make this their full-time assignment?
• Do you know where to start?
• Do you know how to optimize for search engines?
• Do you know how to effectively edit images for the web?
• Will you know how to set up web hosting and register a domain name?

There are advantages to using a professional:

Just as you probably take your car in to the service department for an oil change, or hire a contractor to remodel your kitchen, or pay a carpet cleaner to clean your carpets, there are good reasons to hire a web professional to create your website: you don't have the experience, skills or tools, or there are better ways to use your time.

For a web developer, this IS their full-time job. They will obviously have the skills and can probably get it all done with more functionality, more optimization, and more pizzaz in less time than it takes you to learn a DIY application.

But, if you insist on doing it yourself, do a browser search for "free web design" or "DIY web design." Look for reviews and comments from people who have used the packages. Many are free to use or have a free trial period. 

Do I really need my website to be visible on a cellular phone?

Consider this:

• Mobile searches have increased by > 400%
• 1 in 3 mobile searches are local
• 61% of users called the business and 59% visited
• 79% of smartphone users use their phone to shop; 74% purchased as a result

If that's not enough to convince you, try this exercise. Imagine yourself as one of your customers. They don't have your phone number saved, so they look up your website - on their phone - to find your phone number. How long and how many steps did it take? 

Now look up the number to call Sunstone Web Solutions (or click on the link to see the mobile website). You should have found a phone icon on the front page of our mobile website.

Another reason to have a mobile website is that the content loads much quicker. My husband and I were driving somewhere recently and a song came on the radio. Neither of us could remember who the song was by, so he says, "Go to the website for the radio station and find out." After ten minutes of searching their non-mobile website, I gave up. There was too much information to wade through, it loaded slowly, and I had to pan and zoom my way around to read anything.

A mobile website should be an integrated piece of your business's online presence. Your customers deserve it.