When I speak with small business owners I often ask what’s kept them from creating a presence on the web. Initially, I assumed their answers would range from lack of money to not knowing where to begin.

Yet that’s not what I typically hear.

What I tend to hear, more often than not, are along the lines of,

Digging a little deeper I hear stories about how owners began keeping a list of features each website should include. Many such features include support forums, live chat for tech support or putting each product into a complicated online store. Taken alone, none of those, with the possible exception of the online store, are terribly difficult. But taken together, along with other standard website features, can begin to feel like a major undertaking. No wonder so many people decide it’s just easier to postpone. In the mean time, the list of features continues to grow.

When I meet with small business owners who are feeling this way, I give them the same advice: Start small.

A website is a living organism. Accept that it will never be 100% complete and those tense feelings demanding completeness and perfection often disappear.

Are there features your website should contain? Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start with a few and add more at a later date once you’ve dipped your toes into the waters of the web.

At Ox we try to encourage our customers to think about what they absolutely must have on their site. The “nice to haves” can wait for now.

Starting small allows you to make minor changes on the fly. You may really want a support forum, but maybe

a simple contact form will do for now. It’s always easier to smart small and add features than it is to go big and complex right out of the gate and then try to pull back.

Start small.
Start smart.

We’re here to help.

“Do I need a website or a blog?”

That’s the most commonly asked question I hear when meeting with small business owners. Many people assume it’s one or the other. Others have been told they need a blog but don’t understand why. Still others equate a blog to a personal journal and can’t imagine how one might benefit their business.

I’m not going to attempt to tackle every angle of the debate. What I will do it provide you some insight into my experiences creating both websites and blogs. If anything, I hope you’ll come away with a handful of questions to ask those designing your new site.

It’s probably fair to say that a blog is a subset of a website. All blogs are websites, but not all websites have blog-type features.

Websites have been around since the early days of the internet. One of the first websites I helped create was for an internet service provider. We created a homepage that included our logo and short description of our company. Other pages included a list of our service offerings, one with helpful technical support links, and still others that were focused on partnerships, jobs, and options to sign up for our service.

Once our site was completed, it didn’t change until we added another service or our prices changed. We may have updated it monthly at most. It was basically a billboard that included enough information to entice potential customers to pickup the phone and call us. We did not have an online ordering system at the time, so the only way to sign up for service was by phone.

Many websites today remind me of the one I created nearly 16 years ago. There are many reasons for this, but one is that websites can be difficult to update. Unless you’re familiar with FTP, HTML, ASP, PHP and other acronyms techies love to toss around, updating your site can be an exercise in frustration.

As a product manager at Microsoft in the late 90’s, I often had new product details I wanted to update on the main Microsoft site. I’d gather the information and pass it along to a group  to properly format. They, in turn, passed it on to another group that would eventually upload it to a test server where it would sit for weeks before “going live” on the actual site for the public to see. It wasn’t uncommon for updates to take four to six weeks from the time they left me before they went live.

In my experience, creating a standard website has become easier. But the managing and updating of such is still a difficult and time-sucking proposition for many small business owners. Unless you’re tech savvy and familiar with your site’s file structure, even updating a price list may require involving your web developer or IT manager. For small business owners, this is a real headache.

Blogs are usually easier to create and manage but more difficult to understand. Many blogs are maintained by individuals and are typically updated frequently.  Most are more interactive than static websites by allowing visitors to comment on blog posts. Blog posts are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order although they don’t have to.

Blogs are also highly customizable (through plugins, themes and widgets) and can look like standard websites in appearance. In fact, this site is running on a popular blogging platform called WordPress.

Unlike standard websites that can be difficult to update, blogs are so easy to use that nearly anyone can contribute. You don’t need to know FTP from FTD in order to add new entries or pages to a blog that can include not only text but graphics, audio, and video. And due to their interactive nature, they often integrate well with other social media services such as Twitter and Facebook.

Although blogs are easy to create, they still operate within a set of technical parameters. That may require hiring a designer to customize your blog with your company logo and design to make it look just right. Of course, doing so is an investment.

But that initial investment is often worth it because you’ll end up with a powerful and easily maintainable marketing tool that can grow as your business grows.