Maybe you’ll want to add some new pages, tweak a color scheme, change the width of the site, update a page, or even add some new technology such as facebook or Google Maps.

This is completely normal. Web design isn’t a one off event – we know that websites need to grow and develop over time to be successful. It’s almost certain you’ll want to make some changes as your small business needs mature. You might add some new products, or change your logo or change the welcome message on your home page.

These means then that the service you receive from your website designer can’t be a one-off event either. This needs to be a long term relationship where you get the control over your site that you need.

There are some nice ways to do this right from the start. You might choose to use a simple content management system (CMS) which lets you add new pages yourself and also make changes easily to existing pages. WordPress is a good example of a CMS system. Many of these tools (especially wordpress) even let you change your website theme if you want the style or colors to look different.

Another valuable technique is to integrate a blog into your website. This lets you add posts whenever you like and you can write about any topic you want.

At infinite42 we only work on long term web partnerships with customers, so you’re sure to be able to get the website that you want and any changes that you desire in the future. Contact infinite42 now to learn more about how we do this.

Image: Flickr  CreativeCommons by JoshSemans

Or, put another way, how much would you pay?

This isn’t a test, just something to think about. If your answer is ‘nothing’ and you use Twitter to market your small business website, then read on…

Hopefully you already have lots of followers and they read and retweet your tweets (if you’re not sure about this then it’s time to start measuring these). A percentage of these people should turn into leads by direct messaging you or by visiting your website and triggering your conversion goals (again, if this concept is confusing, by all means ask for help)

How valuable are those Twitter leads? If you lost those leads what would that cost your business?

So now how much would you pay for Twitter? The sensible answer here would have to be ‘less than the value of the leads it brings you’ – but definitely more than nothing.

Again, this isn’t a test, but it is intended to help you think about whether you’re getting real value from Twitter as a marketing channel for your website. If after all these questions you still think it’s worthless then it might be worth re-thinking your tweeting (or your tracking, or your website and products).

PS. I wonder how many people out of the 0% used Twitter actively for business promotion?

More interesting articles:

Squeeze Your Twitter Lists

Are Your Tweets Search-Engine Friendly?

So it’s probably a good time to start checking your site speed now and plan any improvements that you’ll need to make.

To get you going, here are a few links to try out:

The Site Performance Tab on  Google Webmaster Tools

Try out the Page Speed extension for Firefox

Definitely look at Web Performance Best Practices at Google!

How fast is your site?

Should you integrate a blog into your small business website or use a standalone blog site? Does it matter? Which one is best for visitors, or branding, or SEO?

It’s a good question, but probably misses the most important issue, which is whether to blog (or not). In my opinion, it’s one of the most useful things you can do for your small business, since it’s great for connecting with customers, sharing info, getting feedback, getting ideas straight in your head, and so on. So whether you choose to integrate your blog or not, your priority should really be to just get started.

So what’s an integrated blog anyway? It just a section of your website where your blog appears. It’s probably under the same URL as your main site, and possibly under a separate directory such as www.yoursite.com/blog (I’d recommend that – see later). You can integrate your own blog pretty easily using open source platforms like wordpress or moveable type.

The alternative to this is to run a separate blog site, possibly using a hosted blogging solution such as wordpress.com or blogger. The great thing about these are that they are really easy to set up and get going. You can customize them too using standard templates.

So how do you decide whether to integrate? Instead of making up your mind for you, here are some things to consider:

1. Either way, the main thing to focus on is whether visitors see a common theme/brand/message between the blog and your main website. If that means the blog is part of the main site, then good!

2. Can a hosted blog be customized to look the same as your main site (or at least very close?)

3. If you use an integrated blog, such as wordpress.org, it’s good to keep this in a separate section or directory, so it’s 100% clear to readers that they are reading a blog

4. Which is best for SEO? I don’t think it makes much difference (see the PS. at the bottom)

5. With a separately-hosted blog you’ve got two sites to promote, instead of one. That’s twice the amount of link-building and socializing to do. This isn’t completely black and white though, since you can (and should)  interlink the two sites.

6. Do you think your readers would benefit from finding all your content in one place (blog, main home page, product pages, about me and personal info, info pages, etc)?

So having read through these points, which would you choose for your website and blog?

PS. I’d be careful about getting too hung up on blogs for SEO. The value of a blog post for Page Rank (etc) is very low on it’s own, so it won’t contribute much to your overall site ranking unless it has a lot of inbound links. Unless you’re a high profile blogger, you’re probably not going to attract too many links to each post. Of course if you get your niche & keywords right then you certainly can attract plenty of keyword traffic through your blog. I’ve seen many sites that are only blogs and they catch a lot of Google traffic.

Image credit: dorineruter

I wrote the Squeeze Guide as a high level introduction of the things that you need to do to make your website successful. You can download it here for free just by clicking on the picture.

I hope you’ll find it useful. If you do, please share it with a friend who owns a website. Don’t forget to save your copy when you’ve downloaded it (just use File -> Save As in your PDF reader).

I hate spam as much as everyone else and will not share your contact info with anyone else.

To get you hungry for news, here are some examples of recent topics I’ve covered:

Really Easy Content Creation

All about posterous.com

Keep Hackers Out of Your Blog

Protect your wordpress installation

Be the First Fan on My Facebook Page…

I’m afraid you missed the chance!!

This is a pretty hefty list of things for your website to do. You probably need to be a little less ambitious with your website goals.

Let’s make things a bit easier. You should define one or more goals that are more manageable, specific and measurable (ever heard of SMART goals?)

What’s the role of your website? Is it:

• a brochure site, with pictures and info about your products? Do you send people to it to find out more about what you offer?
• there to inform or educate your readers?
• a blog or diary type of site, where you add regular updates on subjects related to your business?
• there to gather leads? Maybe you have customer surveys, or you exchange free info for email addresses, or twitter followers
• an e-commerce site? Do you sell your stuff online?

The structure and design of the website will be different for each of these and needs to support your small business website goal. Here’s an example. Which one of these is better defined, more manageable and easier to measure on your website:

1. Promote your small business, or

2. Gather relevant leads by collecting email addresses and phone numbers?

See what I mean?

It’s important to get the goals right for any website, even if you have 10,000 pages. For a small business website though, it’s even more important, because you have to carefully justify the time and resources that you spend on every single page.

Once your goal is defined, you can break it down into the steps that visitors can take to complete it. This will help you to define the role of each of the pages or sections. Are the pages there to educate? Do you want people to read them, then click through to read more information? Or do you want them to come back tomorrow to read your latest update? How about next week?

It’s traditional in web design to think in terms of visitors, bounce rates and funnels, but this thinking could be out of date for your site.

It might be better to think about the time spent on key pages, conversions, single page visits and repeat visitors.

Once you’ve defined your website goals(s) you’ll find it a lot easier to plan out your website, write it and promote it.

Surely it’s easier and quicker to advertise on one of the vacation rental sites, or even to use one of the free listing services such as Google Base or Craig’s list? This is probably true, but what you want is results, and in this business that means visitors and bookings.

Here are nine reasons why your own site design will get you something a little better…

1. There’s too much competition so you need to do everything you can to improve your visibility on the internet. You simply can’t afford to miss out on your own site.

2. You can show your unique difference. Your property is uniquely different, right? You can use your site to highlight this, rather than fitting in with a bunch of other listings.

3. You’ll be more credible as a true online business with a brand, since you can choose your own logo, style and tagline.

4. Site tracking and analytics are way better. Actually they are probably non-existent on the free sites. Analytics allows you to make wise choices based on where your visitors come from, what they are looking for, and what leads them to a conversion.

5. Build as many pages as you want. Content is free (kind of) and there’s no restriction to a single page advert.

6. You get your own domain name. Good for branding (see above) plus you get to build your own Page Rank rather than contributing to someone else’s.

7. Choose your own conversion – whether it’s a contact form, advertising, newsletters, or a free brochure. You’re not restricted to a single form, and you’re free to build any combination of these to suit your website goals.

8. It’s stickier (I borrowed that term). In other words, you can layer more pages of useful information on your readers and take longer to convince them that you have a great place and offer unparalleled customer service. Compare this to a single page listing on a shared site where your competitors are just one click away…

9. Change your mind any time. Some listings sites only allow infrequent updates or may charge when you want to make a change. With your own site you can make adjustments and improvements any time.

One final thing. If you do decide to design your own vacation rental website, please don’t just buy a clone (unless you want to look like everyone else of course!)

There’s a brand new Squeeze Guide available for vacation rental website owners. This builds on my original free guide, Squeeze More Results From Your Website, but adds a lot more focus on some of the issues that make vacation rental websites unique.

Speaking from experience, you might find:

- SEO is tough because you’re competing in a high competition market

- visual style is very important as people often choose a vacation rental based on the pictures

- it’s a true online business where conversions = bookings = money!

You can download the Squeeze Your Vacation Rental for free – just click on the orange!

A couple of people took this the wrong way and said it was inappropriate to poke fun at guests.

That wasn’t the point. Here’s my view:

1. Adding a blog to your vacation rental website is a great way to build interest and personality (and pages) to your website and online presence. You can blog about the area, about tourist attractions, special offers, or updates to your property. Oh, and you could also tell the story about the guest who complained that your Florida place was too hot in the summer.

2. Feel free to be funny anywhere you like on your website. People remember when they laugh. Humor helps to break down barriers and shows you are a real human. Keep it clean and don’t overstep the mark though. If you are not naturally funny, this might be a risky approach.

So which place would you rent? The one with a website with a few pictures and some descriptions of the rooms? Or the one which also had the author’s blog which told you all about the area and some of the great experiences they’d had working with guests?

I know which one I would choose!