What a website can do
What a website can do
Most people ask for a website when what they want is one of these. Each one below is a real thing a website can do for a business, and each one links to a place where it is already running.
Showing what you sell
The difference between a website that describes a business and one that lets somebody choose.
A catalogue with a page for each item
Every product or service gets its own page, with its own price and photographs, so a customer can compare and decide without phoning you.
Specifications a buyer can judge
Materials, sizes, tolerances and lead times on the page, so a serious buyer can qualify you before they make contact.
A published rate card
A price against every service and every length of booking, so somebody can work out what their job costs at ten at night.
A gallery that sells the work
Photographs of real jobs, at a size somebody can judge, loading quickly enough that they stay to look.
Taking money and work in
Where a website stops being a brochure and starts doing the admin.
Card payments
Customers pay on your website through Yoco, Payfast or the provider you already use, and the money goes into your account without you chasing an EFT.
Stock that keeps count
The website knows how many you have left, and stops selling a thing when it runs out.
Other people adding their own listings
Somebody outside your business fills in a form, and after you have checked it, their listing appears on your website.
A quote form that asks the deciding questions
Three or four questions that tell you immediately whether a job is worth quoting, so the enquiries that reach you are the ones you want.
Helping people find what they came for
Once a website has more than a few dozen things on it, finding becomes the job.
Real search and filtering
A customer narrows hundreds of listings by what they want, where they are, and what they will spend.
A directory of other businesses
Profiles for people or businesses other than yours, each with their own page, their own details and their own enquiries.
A page for every area you serve
Somebody searching for your trade in their own suburb finds a page about their suburb, not a list of thirty place names.
A calculator that answers a real question
The customer puts in their own numbers and gets an answer, which is worth more to them than a page of explanation.
Being believed
The things that turn a stranger reading a page into somebody who phones.
Your Google reviews on the page
Your rating and your reviews, pulled straight from Google, where a customer sees them without going looking.
More than one language
The whole website, in every language your customers actually use, with each version findable on Google in that language.
The questions answered before they are asked
The three or four things every caller asks, answered on the page, so your phone rings for work rather than for admin.
Writing that brings people in
Articles answering what your customers type into Google, which is how somebody who has never heard of you arrives.
If yours is not on this list
This is what has come up so far, not a menu of everything that is possible. Two of the websites on this page do things that no small business website is supposed to do, because the business needed them.
So tell me what you want your website to do, in your own words. If it can be built, I will tell you what it takes and what it costs. If it cannot, or if it is not worth what it would cost you, I will tell you that instead.